When Villains Rise

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  Kovit was very still, and he blinked slowly before whispering, “Fuck.”

  Nita pursed her lips and closed the window. “Mirella has no proof, and anyways, this isn’t a trial right now. We can still fix this.”

  “Even when the videos come out?” Kovit sounded skeptical.

  “Even then.” Nita opened the fake email account she’d created when they sent Mirella the information about the assassination and found a response.

  Thank you, whoever you are, for this information. It saved my life. If there’s ever anything I can do in return, let me know.—Mirella

  “Translate it for me?” Kovit asked, and Nita did. His smile was bitter. “So we actually saved her, and she decided to go do this?”

  “She doesn’t know we’re the ones who sent the information.” Nita’s voice was soft.

  “Would she have refrained from making that video if she knew?”

  Nita considered, remembering Mirella, fierce and angry and full of hatred for all the people who’d wronged her. Nita recalled the way she spoke of Kovit, the violence that dripped from her words, and she thought of the video she’d watched. Kovit hadn’t just hurt Mirella once. He’d done it often, who knew how often, before Nita came. She didn’t think Mirella would ever forgive Kovit. Nita didn’t blame her.

  “No,” Nita said. “I don’t think it would have changed anything.” She looked down at the email. “Do you want me to tell her who her savior was?”

  Kovit stared at the email for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. If it won’t make her recant her statement, there’s no point.”

  Nita lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t want her to think you feel guilty?”

  “Why should I care what she thinks of me?” He sounded genuinely baffled. “If you think that me pretending to feel guilty will make her switch to our side, I’ll play whatever tune you need me to. But I see no point in making her believe I feel guilty when I don’t and there’s no benefit.”

  Nita let her fingers fall. Sometimes Nita thought Kovit might actually feel some sort of guilt for his actions, especially after he’d sent the warning to Mirella yesterday. But then she would be reminded starkly that he really didn’t, and all her thoughts about that were just Nita projecting, wishing he felt guilty because it would make everything a little less terrible.

  “All right,” Nita said, and didn’t press further.

  Kovit sat down on the bed and then lay back, staring at the ceiling. “I should have killed her.”

  “We’d be dead too, then,” Nita responded absently, flipping through the phone she’d taken from Henry. “She’s the reason we made it to the docks at Tabatinga after the market blew up. She unwittingly saved your life.”

  He didn’t respond, and Nita didn’t expect him to.

  Nita went to the cloud where she’d first seen all those videos Henry had been blackmailing Kovit with. There were hundreds of them, spanning years. She didn’t know if the whole file, en masse, had been shared with INHUP, but this looked like all the recordings he’d ever taken. Which gave her an idea.

  “Look, right now, Mirella isn’t important.” Nita turned to him. “She’s a revolutionary in a fringe part of the world most people don’t know or care about. People are already online calling her accusations lies to get attention for her cause. What’s important is INHUP, which will release videos of you soon. What’s important is that we control the narrative they’re trying to build.” Nita’s voice was firm. “They need time to make sure everything is in order before releasing the videos. We don’t.”

  He frowned. “What are you saying?”

  “We’re going to release them first.”

  Kovit stared at her, face blank. “What?”

  “Everyone is questioning INHUP right now. It’s the perfect time to show them how broken the Dangerous Unnaturals List is.”

  “By showing them videos of me as a child torturing people?” He laughed, high and light. “Somehow I don’t think that will make them sympathetic.”

  Nita smiled softly. “It won’t. Not if INHUP decides on the videos to release. But if you and I pick just the right video, we can change the narrative.”

  “How?”

  “There are hundreds of videos here. You worked for the Family for years.” She licked her lips and then gently asked, “Was there any time you refused to hurt someone? Any time you resisted?”

  He gave her a skeptical look. “I rather enjoyed those torture sessions. They were the best part of my life.”

  “I’m sure,” Nita said, sliding past that and trying not to think too hard about it. “But you have rules. Henry must have broken them once or twice before Matt. Didn’t you tell me once about a Family member who wanted you to torture some girl who didn’t want to have sex with him?”

  Kovit blinked slowly, thoughtfully. “There were a few incidents.”

  Nita handed him the phone. “This is all Henry’s videos on the cloud. Find one. Find one we can use to paint you as sympathetic. The younger you are in it, the better. I want it to look like you were beaten into this path, not like you were willing. Coercion of a minor is a crime—if they can prove force, you’re not culpable.”

  He gave her a look. “I’m very culpable.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know that.” She leaned closer. “But the truth doesn’t matter. We’re crafting a story. They’re going to try and prove you’re a monster, so we want to try and make people believe you’re a tragic victim instead.”

  He frowned down at the phone. “Do you really think people will believe that?”

  “People will believe what you tell them to believe. You’re young, attractive, and have a tragic past. We can spin this. People love a tragic past and a reformed monster.” She shrugged. “I know it’s not true, but it’s as true as the monster mask you wore in the Family.”

  The more Nita thought about it, the more she wondered if life was just a series of masks you wore. Kovit was a different person with her than with Fabricio than with Henry than with his victims than with his sister. All the masks were him, just not all of him, only a piece.

  Nita was the same, behaving differently in different situations. She wondered if it was impossible to be all of yourself at the same time, because yourself was too complicated. So people broke it down into bits and pieces and wore some of them some days and others different days.

  “I see what you’re getting at.” He considered. “I can pretend to be good and tragic or whatever. I think. I’ve never really tried before. What do good people do?”

  “They feel all angsty and guilty about all the terrible things they did.” Nita grinned a little, voice wicked. “You’re going to have to practice your dramatic brooding, after all.”

  He gave her a long-suffering face. “People always look constipated when they brood.”

  She laughed, and he started flipping through the files on the phone. “Can you think of a video to use?”

  He nodded, eyes glued to the tiny thumbnails. “I know just the one.”

  Twenty-Eight

  NITA WATCHED THE VIDEO Kovit chose. Or at least, she watched the start of it. He helpfully paused it before it got too dark.

  Kovit was young in the video, ten, maybe eleven, but small and round-cheeked enough that he could probably pass for younger if he wanted. Like the other videos, it took place in a room with white walls and white floors and a steel table in the middle with a person tied on it.

  The person on the table was young, maybe twelve, a boy with short blond hair and huge blue eyes. His mouth was taped, and he was trying to scream through his bindings, but it wasn’t working.

  Kovit walked in, but this time, he was accompanied by Henry, who was clearly visible—Nita was pretty sure that meant this particular video hadn’t been sent to INHUP. It was part of Henry’s personal collection.

  It was hard for Nita to watch the rest. Tiny child Kovit refused to hurt the boy, his English broken and heavily accented, a stark reminder of how out of his depth Kovit had
been when the Family had taken him in.

  Henry hadn’t taken it well.

  Nita flinched at every blow to child Kovit and every time his small, broken body jerked from a boot, or his tiny face turned toward the camera, blood covering his features and face swelling and blackening. With every rejection small Kovit gave, and every blow that followed, her heart broke a little.

  In the end, Henry gave up and agreed he’d deal with the child himself, but he still forced Kovit to stay in the room while he made the boy scream, skin fluttering to the ground in thin strips as Kovit gasped and rolled on the floor, a combination of ecstasy from the child’s pain and agony from his own.

  Nita uploaded the video and sent the links to all her newfound media contacts.

  Then she closed the phone and quietly turned to Kovit. “I never realized . . .”

  He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with having shared the video. “It didn’t happen often. Henry didn’t bring me more children. He realized I got difficult with them. I think he thought I’d get over it in time. He taught me a lot. He really was a great mentor.” He paused a heartbeat, before clarifying, “Most of the time.”

  Nita didn’t argue with him. Kovit had murdered Henry to save himself, and if he wanted to cling to the illusion that his childhood had happy moments instead of acknowledging that it had been ruled by an abusive, controlling monster, then she wasn’t going to break his image.

  She wasn’t exactly one to talk.

  She tried not to think about the parallels to her own upbringing. Her mother never forced her to torture people. But her mother did leave the bodies of small animals in Nita’s bed when she disobeyed her parents, broke Nita’s body to teach her how to heal it, crushed all her dreams, all her hopes of leaving, created an aura of terror that still made Nita flinch whenever she thought about disobedience.

  Kovit closed his eyes. “I can see your face, judging me.”

  “I mean, he was pretty awful from what I saw.”

  Kovit was silent a long moment. His breathing was deep and slow, and when he finally opened his eyes, he admitted, so softly that she could barely hear him, “You’re right. He was awful.”

  Nita was silent, watching.

  “He betrayed me. He manipulated me. He murdered my friend.” Kovit squeezed his eyes shut tight for a moment and ran his hands over his face. “But I can’t seem to stop this rose-tinted view of him from creeping back in. I can’t seem to stop feeling shitty for having killed him.”

  Nita sat beside him and sighed. “Brains are weird like that. It’s common to gloss over the bad things, or think it wasn’t all that bad after it’s over. It’s not like you can actually go back and look and see what the reality was anymore.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” He looked at her, head tilted. “Is there anything you still romanticize that way?”

  She went to shake her head, but paused, thinking. Her conversation with Andrej had brought a lot of ugly questions into her mind, and the one she’d avoided facing was what all of this said about her father.

  Her father. Who loved her. Who cared for her.

  Who’d helped her mother murder the head of INHUP. Who’d passed a law to create the DUL. Who Nita hadn’t really, truly seen since she was a child. Who was wholly and completely her mother’s person. And for all that in Nita’s mind he stood up for her, the truth was, he never went against her mother. He was calming and could sometimes mediate. He loved Nita and would do things with her.

  But he never stopped her mother from hurting her. He never gainsaid her mother.

  He was powerless, and as much as she hated to admit it, she wondered how much of her love for him was real and how much she’d built up in her mind over the years, a lifeline to cling to when things got ugly.

  She didn’t say anything, though. If she voiced those concerns, then they’d be real. If she kept them quiet, maybe they would die in the dark. Because her father was dead and gone and never coming back, so even if he hadn’t stood up for her, hadn’t protected her in all the ways she wanted him to, what was the point in dredging it up? He wasn’t there to confront. Wasn’t there to talk to. He was gone, and the truth went with him.

  So it was better to just let herself have that rose-tinted view. Whether it was real or not didn’t really matter anymore.

  “Nita?” Kovit asked, voice concerned.

  “Sorry, lost in thought.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I have a rose tinted view of much of anything in my past anymore.”

  Kovit lay back on the bed. “You know, the strange thing is, even though I still have all these ugly, awful feelings about what I did, and even though the whole world is hunting me, I feel . . . freer than I ever have before. I don’t think I realized that I was slowly being strangled to death by him, and when I cut him down, I felt like I was breathing for the first time in a long time.”

  Nita lay down beside him, and said softly, “Sometimes freedom comes at an ugly price.”

  He was silent for a moment before he whispered, “I don’t think this guilt will ever go away. I don’t think I’ll ever not feel awful about killing Henry.”

  “But you don’t regret it?”

  “No.” He swallowed. “It had to be done.”

  “Then it’s okay,” Nita said gently. “If you didn’t feel at all guilty, I’d be a bit worried about you. It’s human to feel terrible about something like that.”

  He sighed softly. “I know. I just wanted . . . I made the right decision. I just wish it weren’t so hard. I wish that making the right choice wasn’t so painful. If it’s the right decision, it shouldn’t leave you feeling like shit, you know?”

  She smiled bitterly. “If only the world worked like that.”

  “If only.” He let out a soft sound, then closed his eyes. “But it’s okay. I’m learning to deal with the guilt. I did something terrible, and it’s okay to feel bad about it without regretting my choices. I will always love Henry, just a little, despite it all, and that’s okay too.”

  Nita didn’t know how to respond to that. Kovit had done an awful lot of other terrible things in his life, much worse than killing Henry. But she just squeezed his arm gently, understanding that some crimes might be objectively less terrible but emotionally much more impactful.

  There were still plans to be made, set ups to be done for meeting Alberto Tácunan later today. But for now, there was just them and the understanding that sometimes people you loved betrayed you, and sometimes cutting them out of your lives was the only way to heal yourself, even if you lost a piece of your soul doing so.

  Twenty-Nine

  THEY NAPPED FOR A BIT, then ordered delivery. Kovit released Fabricio, and the three of them ate in silence, tense for what had to come next, the whole point of their trip to Buenos Aires in the first place.

  In two hours, they were meeting Alberto Tácunan.

  Fabricio’s whole body was tight with tension as he ate, and he kept staring blankly at the pizza and then shuddering slightly. Occasionally, he’d take slow, calming breaths, and Nita wondered what memories he was reliving that haunted his expression so. She thought of asking, but she didn’t think he’d answer. And she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to know.

  The walk to the hotel was quiet and charged. They had to stop at a few places for Nita to pick up supplies, and the whole time Fabricio’s shoulders were tight, and he hunched over slightly, trying to make himself smaller. His eyes flicked around, his expression a strange combination of terror and determination. Nita kept close to him in case he got cold feet and decided to make a break for it.

  But he didn’t. His forehead gleamed with nervous sweat, but his mouth was set.

  She wondered at the three of them, all terrified of the people who’d raised them, all warped and twisted and destroyed in some way or another by the black market as they grew up. She wondered if they were like trees that started growing sideways young and could never straighten out, would always be deformed in some way, or like chameleons, who could l
ose a tail and just grow themselves a new one given enough time.

  As they walked, Nita noticed the hunters. Normal people on the way to work, their eyes nervous and sharp as they scanned the streets. Baristas in coffee shops, their eyes too focused on each person who came in, examining their features as though wondering, Is that the zannie?

  A shorter, slightly round young man walking along got accosted a block ahead of them by two civilians, who demanded he take off his sunglasses prove he wasn’t a zannie. Nita could hear the man’s indignant protests, asking how they could mistake him for Thai when he was so obviously Argentinian.

  Nita linked her arm with Kovit’s and turned them away. Kovit’s eyes didn’t leave the scene until they turned a corner, and his body was stiff with fear.

  Walking together offered him some protection, since eyes passed over them, as though people couldn’t imagine a zannie traveling with others, or having a girlfriend, or whatever they looked like to the outside world.

  But the Dangerous Unnaturals List was everywhere, printed and pasted on walls, up on everyone’s phones, and Nita shivered, wondering how many innocent people who resembled Kovit had already been attacked, like the girls who looked like Nita back in Toronto.

  She tried not to think about it.

  The hotel lobby was pristine and clear. Kovit fiddled with his sunglasses but didn’t take them off, even though they were indoors. It made him stand out, but it was still less risky than having him take them off and be recognized.

  They headed to Almeida’s room. Nita had disposed of the diplomat’s body at the same time she’d disposed of Andrej’s body last night. She didn’t want the stench of rot to give away all their plans, and she didn’t want any bodies found in the hotel.

  Of course, after tonight, she didn’t care if they found bodies. She just needed everything to look normal until she had the password from Alberto Tácunan.

  Inside Almeida’s room, the faint smell of corpse remained, a combination of urine and a hint of rot. Nita found the smell of it comforting. Decay and death had always been her life’s work. And this death was a piece of her success.