“Aren’t they?” His eyes were open and honest, but his smile was clever. “When I was younger, my father used to order these elaborate Starbucks drinks. Half sugar, shots of syrup, almond milk, low-fat whipped cream, all that stuff. He’d get angry when they got it wrong, and his request was always so complicated they often did. I always ordered something really simple, even though I wanted whipped cream too. But I didn’t want the barista to think I was like my father, demanding and inconsiderate.” He looked down into his maté, as if it were a window into a past that made him sad. “It was, as you say, an uncomplicated interaction. Just an order at Starbucks. But even in that, there are layers.”
Nita was silent. She’d never thought too much about the casual considerations that went into everyday encounters. Now that she was, she found she didn’t like the picture Fabricio was painting.
“So you see, Nita, to some extent, all our interactions are manipulations of some sort or another. We’re all playing a part, and how we deal with people is a trick to show them what part we want them to think we’re playing.”
Nita’s eyes narrowed at that. “Is that so? Well, I see what part you’re playing with Kovit.”
“Do you? Because if you really did, I don’t think you’d be so angry.” Fabricio smiled slightly and set down his maté. “Speaking of, I imagine you want to follow him now. It’s about the right time for you to play the good friend. That’s your role, isn’t it?” He rose and went to the couch Kovit had vacated, pulling one of the blankets draped over the top onto his shoulders. “And it’s about time for me to go to bed. I still have some drugs to get out of my system.”
“Please.” Nita rose. “Those wore off hours ago.”
He curled up on the couch. “So you say, but I doubt you’ve ever experienced being drugged. Not fully. The moment you can think clearly, you can heal it. I, unfortunately, can’t.” He closed his eyes and rolled away from her. “Good night, Nita. Kovit is waiting.”
She hesitated, wanting to say more. But she didn’t know what to say or how to counter his arguments. She didn’t even know that she disagreed with him, she just felt like she should say something.
But why do you want to say something? Do you just want Fabricio to be wrong because he’s Fabricio? asked a small voice in her head.
No, Nita responded, then hesitated. Maybe.
She looked at Fabricio’s back, his body curled away from her. He’d pulled himself into the fetal position even though it clearly wasn’t the most comfortable position on the couch, and she wondered, not for the first time, what his life had been like before she met him. Because the more she spoke to Fabricio, the more she saw the cracks in him, saw that he was just as broken as she and Kovit, maybe even more so. He just knew how to hide it better.
She turned away. She could ponder Fabricio and his warped manipulative mind later. For now, he was right—it was time to go see Kovit.
Nita walked to the door and tapped softly on it. “Kovit? Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
She opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it behind her. This was a private conversation. She didn’t need Fabricio eavesdropping and figuring out how to manipulate them even better.
Kovit sprawled on the bed, the tea by his side. His shirt had ridden up, exposing a thin line of skin, and his whole body glowed with health and beauty from the pain he’d just eaten. Draped across the bed, he looked achingly beautiful and not quite real, like a model on the cover of a magazine. Glossy and a little bit alien.
Nita slowly sat beside him. “You know Fabricio’s manipulating you. He just doesn’t want you to hurt him again.”
“I know.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t stop it from being effective.”
Nita raised an eyebrow.
He gave her a self-deprecating smile. “Nita, relax. I know you’re worried Fabricio has some diabolical motive for the things he said, but even I can see his plan. He laid it out pretty bluntly.”
“Is it working?”
He hesitated, then looked away. “You don’t want me to hurt him anymore, right?”
“No.”
“Good. Then it doesn’t matter if it’s working or not.”
She snort-laughed. “If you know what he’s doing and why, then why are you letting it affect you at all?”
Kovit sighed, closing his eyes. “Because for all his manipulation, he saw me. He looked at me, even after I hurt him, and he didn’t see a monster. He saw a human to be understood. He might be manipulating me, but he thinks I’m a real person.” His voice was small. “You’ve seen how rare that is.”
She had. Henry used him like a tool, Gold saw him as nothing more than a monster. People they’d attacked had referred to him as “it” and assumed Nita could command him, like a trained dog.
Nita snorted. “Are you telling me that his attempt to manipulate you worked because he acknowledged that he’s manipulating you?”
Kovit laughed. “Pretty much.”
“You do realize that just because Fabricio sees you as a person doesn’t mean he won’t betray you.” Nita’s voice was full of barely contained anger.
Kovit’s smile was warped and twisted. “Oh, I know.”
They were silent a long moment, both looking up at the ceiling, lost in bitter thoughts.
Nita hesitated. “Are you thinking about what Fabricio said? About how people will treat you like a human if you treat them like a human?”
He considered. “A little. But I’m not naive enough to believe it would really happen that easily. Even if I turned into a saint tomorrow, never hurt another person, got everything I needed from emergency rooms and physiotherapy clinics or whatever, it wouldn’t really change things. There’s still decades of INHUP propaganda about dangerous unnaturals, multitudes of crimes committed by other zannies, and people’s assumptions, never mind my own past, if it ever got out.”
Nita nodded. As much as she’d have liked to tell him it really was that easy, do good unto others and it shall be done unto you, or whatever the hell the Bible thumpers said, the truth was it wouldn’t. The most selfless act Nita had ever done was to free Fabricio—and all it got her was sold on the black market.
The world wasn’t fair. And it didn’t operate on a karmic cycle, much as people wished.
She flopped down beside him and gently poked the crease between his eyes. “Then what is it that has you thinking so hard?”
He smiled slightly and playfully batted her hand away, like a small kitten.
She raised her eyebrows, and he sighed heavily before admitting, “I just feel like I’m slipping back into old patterns.”
“Old patterns?”
He stared up at the ceiling, brow furrowing. “I’ve escaped from Reyes, from Henry, from the Family, but a part of me feels like I haven’t really escaped. This is all I did in the Family. Hide away until I was needed, and then I’d terrify the Family’s enemies. I’d hurt them, punish people for their transgressions. Nothing’s changed.” He met her eyes. “Even though I’ve escaped, all I’ve done is the exact same things I did when I was in a cage.”
Nita bit her lip, because he wasn’t wrong. “You don’t have to stay with me. You’ve always been free to leave.”
“Nita, I’m not going anywhere.” His voice was gentle. “It’s not about you. We’re partners, and you’ve been doing better about not asking for things I can’t give. I appreciate it.”
“Then what can I do?”
“Nothing.” He sighed heavily. “We’re in a bad situation right now. We have to get through it to survive, and it will be ugly. I know that.” He rubbed his temples. “But it doesn’t make me feel less trapped. I feel like a hamster on a wheel, running the same route over and over. And even though the wheel is gone, all I’ve ever done is run, but now I don’t know where I’m running to or what I’m running on. I’m just running.”
He ran his hands over his forehead and fisted them in his hair. “I want to get off this wheel. I want to try and figure out wh
o I am outside of that life.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.” He closed his eyes. “I just want to try something different, force myself outside of everything I’ve ever lived.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll hate it, but at least it would jolt me off the wheel, so I can figure out who I am for myself.”
Nita lay back and considered. “What kind of different?”
He gave her a small self-deprecating grin. “I have no idea. I guess it’s something I’ll have to figure out.”
Nita linked her fingers with his. “Whatever you decide, I’ll be there for you.”
His smile was soft and genuine, and he shifted slightly to press their foreheads together for a moment and whisper, “Thank you.”
Nita wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace. “Always.”
They curled up like that, arms wrapped around each other, as they slowly drifted to sleep.
Twenty-Three
NITA WOKE UP in the late afternoon when her alarm went off. Kovit moaned beside her, and she sighed softly, unwilling to move from her position curled against his warm body.
He gave her a sleepy look. “Is it time to get up now?”
“You can rest a little longer. I’m going shower and get ready before we go back to the hotel.”
He nodded drowsily and nestled back into the pillow.
She rolled off the bed and stretched, her muscles stiff. She scooped up her phone and checked for messages.
There was one, from her mother.
Nita swallowed, then clicked it open.
You should come home now. Your little monster will be dead soon, it read, followed by a link to Kovit’s DUL listing.
Nita deleted the email, her hands shaking. She’d wondered before if her mother was responsible for Kovit’s name going up faster, if she’d pulled strings and manipulated connections. The more she thought about it, the more sure she was. But whether it was her mother or not, her mother now knew exactly what Kovit looked like.
And she had the whole world on her side, wanting to kill him.
Nita logged out of email and forced herself to move on to more productive lines of thought. There was nothing she could do about her mother right now.
The Washington Post reporter Nita had contacted had posted the article, clearly not wanting to miss the scoop on INHUP’s misconduct. It included the photos of Kovit and his sister that Nita had sent, but it also included multiple short video clips. Some were from local Toronto news channels, some from Instagram feeds, which had obviously been found by scrolling the promotion hashtag. Kovit and Patchaya were caught on camera chatting happily in the background of dozens of videos.
Nita smiled slightly, pleased it had worked out so well.
She scrolled through the comments, some of them wondering if the clips were fake, others wondering if INHUP was trying to trap the zannie, others wondering if he even was a zannie.
Other articles had sprung up, all asking how an INHUP agent could be going on what looked like a date with a zannie. Some speculated that this was a romance gone wrong, and an INHUP agent had abused her power to put her ex-boyfriend on the list.
Nita hadn’t planned for this to look like a lover’s quarrel, and she imagined some intrepid reporter would figure out the truth soon enough, but for now, she liked the romance angle. Romance gone wrong always got a lot of attention in the tabloids.
For once, the stereotypes against zannies worked in Kovit’s favor. The video clips, while short, showed him laughing and smiling and acting perfectly adorable. It was a bit of a shock—usually in public Kovit was mildly terrifying, people steering clear of him without fully understanding why. But in the video he seemed so happy and joyful, and if he had his danger aura, it didn’t come through.
No one believed someone who looked so genuine could be a monster.
Nita skimmed through comments and tweets, a little creeped out by how many people commented on Kovit’s looks and attractiveness, like that was some kind of metric for innocence.
But a lot of people were angry. Petitions had been made, investigations had been called for. Someone had dug up the fact that Kovit had been added to the list before the mandatory weeklong verification period was completed, and this had incensed the public even more. People were demanding Kovit be taken off the list until a thorough inquiry had been done.
Nita smiled as she read through the articles. It was going well, better than she’d expected. Soon people would start to ask how many other innocent people had been put on the list. Investigations would be called, people would demand accountability. The list would grind to a halt during the investigation, everything on pause as the world watched.
Who knew how long an investigation might take. Months? Years? Indefinitely?
Her glee was tempered by wariness. She couldn’t get cocky. INHUP wouldn’t go down that easily. That was fine, though. She’d be ready for whatever they threw at her next.
Beside her, Kovit made a strangled sound. His eyes were glued to his phone screen, and Nita could almost see the life draining out of him.
“What is it?” she asked.
He hesitated, then looked away, his voice a whisper. “My internet friends. They saw the news. They recognized me. They’re asking if it’s true.”
“Ah.” Nita’s voice was heavy with understanding. The only real friends he’d had, shielded from him by a virtual screen. People who’d supported him without knowing at all who he was. The group Gold had infiltrated to spy on Kovit for Henry.
“What do I say?” Kovit looked down at his hands. “I never wanted them to know.”
“You could lie. Say it was a look-alike.”
He shook his head. “And then what? The lie wouldn’t hold forever.”
“Then tell the truth. Your version of the truth. Before Gold gets in there and poisons them all with hers.”
After a long moment, he whispered, “I’m scared.”
Nita’s heart broke a little at the sound, at the fragile cracks in his voice.
“They’ll probably hate me forever. This will be . . . It will be the end.” He looked at her, lashes casting dark shadows on his cheeks. “And I don’t want it to end.”
Nita didn’t know what to say to that, because there wasn’t much she could say. She could tell him that he had other support now, that he wasn’t alone anymore, a scared child trapped in a cage with only the friends on the other side of the screen to keep him sane. But that wouldn’t change how much these people meant to him or lessen the blow of their loss.
So instead, she just squeezed his hand gently, letting him know she was there.
He looked back down at his phone and finally started typing, his fingers slow and heavy as they slid across the screen.
She turned to her own phone. She hadn’t actually read through Kovit’s listing, and she wondered what it said. What horrors his friends were imagining. She found her fingers flicking across her screen before she could stop herself.
It didn’t say much. Just that he was there, he’d committed multiple crimes against humanity.
And that he was currently in Buenos Aires.
Nita swore. Viciously.
Kovit raised his head from the screen, hair flopping across his face. “What is it?”
She sighed and leaned back. “Nothing. Just an annoying complication.”
He groaned softly. “How bad?”
“The listing puts you in Buenos Aires.”
He frowned. “But . . . how?”
Nita’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I don’t know. I only told one person where we were going.” She met his eyes. “Adair.”
Kovit shook his head. “He wouldn’t sell our location to INHUP. He hates the list.”
“I know.” She pulled out her phone and put it to her ear, voice grim. “But I have to ask. Especially since he’s still furious at me for melting his skin off.”
Kovit stared at her with a mixture of horror and fascination. “You melted his skin off?”
> She nodded.
“Did it hurt?”
Of course that was what he was concerned with. She shrugged. “I imagine so.”
Kovit looked like he wanted to ask more, but the phone clicked and the ringing stopped.
“Hello?”
Adair’s voice was tinny over the phone, losing much of its smoothness. It was strange to hear him without seeing his teeth, knowing that beneath his mask, a monster lurked. Just hearing him over the phone, she could pretend he was as human as anyone else.
“So I saw that somehow Kovit’s location got on the dangerous unnaturals listing,” Nita began with no preamble.
“Nita?”
“Who else?”
“Indeed.” Adair sighed. “I didn’t expect to be hearing from you so soon.”
“Really? You didn’t think I’d call when I saw the listing?” Nita leaned against the wall and tried to keep her voice measured, even though she was angry. Angry that everything kept going wrong, angry that she hadn’t prepared for this, angry that Kovit was in danger and she wasn’t powerful enough to do anything about it. “You’re the only other one who knew I was going to Argentina. You’re the only one who could have given my location to the black market.”
There was a short pause, and Nita could hear the click of his computer keys. “Oh, yes, I saw that post this morning. But I’m not the one who told them you two were in Argentina.”
“And why should I believe you?”
Adair snorted. “Believe me or not, I don’t care. But I’m not so wasteful as to post valuable information for free. If I’d leaked it, you better bet I’d be getting paid.”
Of course. Whoever had done this had just posted the information for free for all the world to see. There was no gain here, unless it was some personal vendetta. And even if Adair was pursuing vengeance, he would still want to get paid.
“I see that silenced you.” Adair’s voice crackled over the phone. “Look, Nita. I don’t know who else you’ve told or not, but I wouldn’t have compromised your suicide plan, because on the small chance you actually succeed, I very much want that information, and I’m more than willing to trade for it. I’m not stupid enough to toss away this chance out of petty vengeance.”
When Villains Rise Page 15