I gaped at her as a roil of emotions went through me, which she no doubt felt. No wonder she was so compassionate, underneath the tough love. I felt almost guilty, that she’d been subjected to my emotional rollercoaster the last two days. At the same time, I felt… uncomfortable with the fact she’d been a witness to the lowest points of my life.
I also wasn’t sure she was right, since I could think of a few nasty things she could accomplish with a shield and superspeed without much thought at all, but aggression wasn’t in her nature.
“Alright, I’ll see you both at breakfast. Tomorrow’s a big day. Why am I more nervous about the training than the interview and possible fight with the entire SAB?”
Germaine laughed, “You’re very wise.”
I snorted, we said our good nights, and I headed upstairs to turn in.
Chapter Ten
There were so many superheroes around me with thermal goggles that I felt a little sick to my stomach. There was pretty much no doubt they’d gotten a vision of me trying to give an interview here. My heart was already pumping pretty good, and I felt a little like a drawn bow. The sky was a bit cloudy that morning, but supposedly it wouldn’t start raining until noon, because we all know those meteorologists are always right. Yes, that last was sarcasm.
I was in central plaza by the government buildings, not a quarter mile from SAB headquarters and the plan was pretty simple at its heart. I’d be hijacking the mayor’s speech toward the end of his own, since the place would be filled with journalists. Toward the end, because there was no reason to be rude, I was sure whatever he was going to say was very important.
I’d also gotten around the fact they’d see me invisibly in a very simple and clever manner. I was currently sporting red hair, green eyes, fair skin, and a white sundress with flowers that made me look cute and harmless. Of course, the leg and cleavage I had on display was also part of the illusion, because I was wearing my super suit which we’d determined didn’t block heat signatures at all. In short, they’d see in the thermal goggles what they expected to see, a cute girl in a sundress where the red blob was.
The danger in this plan of course was that I was putting that ability of mine at risk of discovery, but the plan was not to reveal it if all went accordingly. At the same time, I’d possibly be burning the redhead look if they did figure it out after the fact or if things went wrong, which was why I wasn’t wearing the black-haired Belladonna disguise that was vital to keep secret at this point.
The crowd was growing as well, possibly more than a mayor’s conference could account for, and I suspected it was because there were so damned many superheroes floating around. People that would’ve probably just kept going usually, had stopped to gawk at the unprecedented numbers. I guessed they really wanted to kill me for the supposed murder of Mistral, their upstanding and mourned partner against crime. Yeah, I really poured the sarcasm into that last sentence, the murderous bitch.
Regardless, my current appearance wasn’t the reason it’d taken four hours to prepare for this plan, that part was pretty easy to do. I’d already had the redhead disguise and had just needed to make my suit look like skin to round it out. All I’d explained was merely to get me here safely and unnoticed, where I could control the sound and light around me for the real plan.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
I shrugged as I turned to the young man next to me, “Not a clue, except for the mayor’s press conference. Maybe there was a threat or something?”
I wasn’t worried about being overheard and identified, since I was using the redhead’s voice to talk.
The young man suddenly looked around nervously, and he stepped off quickly. Yeah, that was one of the flaws in the plan, when it all went down, I couldn’t exactly run for it like the rest of the human crowd would do. At least, I couldn’t run that far, and I’d have to maintain visual contact somehow.
The cameras started to flash as the mayor and his toadies exited the building and started to make their way down the stairs to the podium. My good friend Sentinel and his lovely partner Solar Wind were guarding him on either side. Okay, I’ll stop with the sarcasm, maybe. I was feeling a bit nervous, and a bit angry. My heart was pumping hard in my chest.
The cameras flashed wildly as he took his place at the podium with a politician’s smile and a wave of his hand. A lot of the press were screaming out questions, including asking about all the superheroes present.
The mayor said, “I won’t be answering any questions today, this will just be an announcement. Three days ago tragedy struck the city when one of our greatest heroine’s was struck down in cold-blooded murder…”
I felt my stomach twist as he continued his memorial speech of Mistral making her sound like Gandhi and mother Theresa all rolled up into one. It was also clearly not what his original speech would’ve been, and the assholes were already doing damage control for when I showed up. I didn’t know if the mayor was in on it, he could just be doing his friends at the SAB a favor.
Well, enough of that bullshit, if they were trying to change the vision the assholes got, well that also meant I could too.
I moved my lips silently, as I appeared in the sky. Black suit, long golden blonde hair, flashing blue eyes. The hair was even wavering slightly in the wind. I was very proud of that part of things, since it wasn’t easy to do out of whole cloth. I also looked pretty good. It was really weird to see myself, if that made sense. I was about fifty feet above the crowd, which was about twenty feet higher than the hovering heroes putting the crowd below out of the line of fire.
“Lies,” I said almost silently, but the word boomed down from above, from the illusion of me in the sky. That’s what’d taken me four solid hours to work out yesterday afternoon.
“Mistral was a state sanctioned murderer of citizens, when she should’ve been protecting the newly quickened and shocked people that trusted her, not killing them. What I did was in self-defense.”
That was about as far as I got before two bright energy blasts, along with red lightning, green lightning, fire balls of various colors, and who knows what else I couldn’t see like wind attacks, telekinesis punches, and telepathy. All the energy attacks went right through the illusion of me of course, and for a somewhat hilarious finale of that first wave of attacks three of the brawling fliers shot at me at high speed. All three of them threw punches and wound up in a three-way superhero crash of epic proportions.
At the same time that was happening, Solar Wind and Sentinel got the mayor and his people running for the building, and of course the crowd panicked. I should get an award for best actress as I screeched in fear and made a run for it, only to dive behind a huge stone plinth twenty feet tall and ten feet wide and long, with a statue of the mayor that’d founded Excelsior city. I peeked around it with a terrified look on my face.
I hate to admit it, but it wasn’t that hard to look scared with all those superheroes out for my blood. They’d straight out just tried to execute me, on the news, just to shut me up. No doubt following orders of the evil men in power behind the executions of citizens as a preventative measure. And they dared to call me a monster?
The press had also run, but they’d left their tripods and video cameras rolling live, with all different angles. I knew from experience they’d never cut off the feed.
My illusion chuckled insultingly as I gracefully lowered to the recently vacated podium with a challenging smile on my face. Well, my illusion’s face.
One of the smarter heroes yelled, “She’s here, somewhere, find her!”
I smirked, “I don’t have a lot of time right now, but I will be uploading a full video of my side of the story shortly. This here was just to get your attention. It’s been three days since I only had a day to live, curious that, no? I also seem pretty sane to myself, and if you notice I ensured there was no collateral damage from this stunt.
“The truth is shocking, no one will want to believe it, but I managed to listen in on my
tester and the doctor with them. They had trouble figuring out a common source for my powers, they also thought I was too emotionally unstable and therefore dangerous. Imagine, I was almost murdered three days ago because I was emotional, on the day that my husband died. On the day my daughter was pulled from me, the day I fell off a bridge, and the day my life changed forever when I was quickened.
“Supers are complicated, just like humans. Has it never occurred to any of you that all supers that go through the system never go bad? Think about that for a minute. Statistically, that’s impossible. I used to just brush that off as strange, but ultimately would dismiss it, it’s only now I could see how ridiculously blind I was being. Seventy percent of us die, so the government can ensure that result, we’re killed for what we might do. Seventy percent are murdered to ensure they get the one percent of us that might go supervillain.
“Three days ago, I tried to escape the SAB building without hurting anyone when I overheard the plot to kill me when I got back to my room. I tried to knock out Mistral and run for it, since she was there to ensure I made it back to my containment room where they could safely kill me. I was running when she contained me in an air trap, and slowly began to suffocate me. I’d had no choice but to defend myself.
“I…” and that’s as far as I got, but the video I made was almost an hour long, and it went deeply into the details of my day save my new identities and Glenn’s assistance, statistics, and a whole bunch of other things. Even if I died there, it would be uploaded to several platforms, as well as sent to the news.
“Maam! I need to get you to safety,” said a familiar voice. He actually sounded concerned for me.
It was a possibility I hadn’t considered, being rescued from myself. If I had assessed that possibility, then I’d have let Freefall grab me and fly me to safety. Then I’d have simply walked away free and clear as the redhead. But I wasn’t mentally prepared for it and I flinched back as he grabbed me by the arms a split second later, and when his face strained to move me less than an inch, I knew I was busted. Well, at least it went to plan that far.
“Hey Freefall, you know you work for murderers, don’t you?” I asked in my natural voice, canceling my redhead look as well as the woman behind the podium which disappeared. I probably had two seconds before they all rushed over to me, but for that moment we were hidden behind the plinth from most of the heroes’ line of sight, and the couple that could see us weren’t looking in my direction at the moment.
He gaped at me, “You’re crazy.”
I nodded, “I’m also dead, or I should be according to your scientists. I imagined they didn’t think I could evade you all for three long days, stupid in hindsight, don’t you think? Let go of my arm, now.”
He grimaced, so I grabbed him, and then took off into the sky like a bullet from a gun. The concussive wave from my takeoff destroyed the statue of our city’s great founder, oops? Then I took off south. Almost every hero followed me, but I quickly lost all but a handful. Mach speed was rare in fliers, and I’d learn later my top speed was just under Mach three.
It’d also ripped the sundress right off my body, more proof that I was right to give in on the skintight black full-bodied super suit.
I asked, “How can you not see the truth right in front of you. Is it just too horrifying to contemplate that truth? That you’ve been gulled and duped, working for monsters hiding behind government suits and authority. Take your head out of the sand and look around.”
He snorted, “You’re talking about a worldwide conspiracy. It would be unsustainable.”
“Not quite, a few countries are in on it, but most countries don’t have our seventy percent loss, and the genetic drift argument they espouse to explain that is just another line of bullshit. Believe me, I doubted for the same reasons. There has to be a couple of supers in the know along with few of the medical staff in every building, plus politicians in power, possibly some of the people in the NSA, and the top rung of the SAB. I never believed either, not until I heard it straight from the doctor’s mouth.
“Raymond has zero integrity, I could hear it in his voice that he thought it was wrong to kill me, but in the end he agreed with the doctor. Out of fear, out of… whatever. Think about it, they kill anyone that could go bad by their measurements and statistics, when only one percent of them would definitely go bad. You don’t think they could analyze it from the other side too?”
He scowled, “Other side?”
I nodded, “Figure out who has dubious morality and can be manipulated, then recruit them into the know. If they make a mistake, they can always kill them and hush it up. Computer databases, data mining, social constructs, the government knows everything about everyone. It wouldn’t even be hard for them to find willing people. People that would feel justified in the threat we represent. That would feel pride in a horribly self-justified and twisted morality, turning evil into good and good into evil.”
“That’s crazy.”
I sighed, I knew he wasn’t one of them. He was a damned boy scout, with unshakeable faith in his country. To be fair, most of the country was good, but there was a rotten and murderous cancer inside of it, “Let go, some of them are catching up and I need to disappear.”
He narrowed his eyes, “I can’t do that,” he also started to struggle then and try to slow me down.
I tried one last time, “All those heroes just tried to kill me earlier. With all those energy attacks, I’d have been killed. Don’t you usually arrest supervillains and put them up in a cell? Think about that, and your orders. Did they tell you all I was too dangerous to live, and that I couldn’t be contained?”
His eyes were unchanged, and he really was slowing me down.
I shook my head at my failure to reach the fool. It’d be even harder to convince people than I’d feared, and I focused some of those sound waves I was deadening into a very narrow strike on his forearms. A part of me wished I’d been able to come up with the idea back then, on that first day, but I’d been too new at my powers, and too inexperienced. I’d lashed out at her in entirety. Only a small part of me though, I truly believed Mistral deserved what she got, in the end.
I just regretted the cost to my own soul, in taking a life.
The bones in his forearms cracked and he screamed out as his fingers reflexively loosened. The tendons to tighten the fingers were secured there. Then I let him go and poured on the speed as he twisted wildly in the wind and tried to gain control. He wasn’t a Mach flier, and I left him far behind but there were five others on my ass, two with energy powers. He’d be fine though, his forearms had probably already healed.
As far as I could tell at that point, there’d be no escape for me in the air, not without a fight. I was fast, but those five were slightly faster and wearing those thermal goggles, so invisibility wouldn’t help me. It’d only taken them so long to catch up because fleeing had caught them flatfooted for a few seconds. I wasn’t too worried about the three brawlers, I was stronger than all of them, possibly put together. But I also hadn’t had any training in fighting yet, which could make a difference.
The two energy wielders were far more problematic in my mind, and it wouldn’t be long before they were close enough to fire. One of them had a white nimbus around them, and I assumed it was one of the pure energy throwers, bolts of white-hot energy that would do a number on me. The second one had swirling fire shooting out of their feet like a damned afterburner.
They were all going the same speed too, as a team, so four of them could’ve been a lot faster than me for all I knew. I was somewhere over the coast of New Jersey, and I turned out to the ocean and dove for the water. I had the vague idea thermal might not work underwater for some reason.
I turned out to be totally wrong, because when I hit the surface and started to fly at a much-reduced speed all while turning invisible, the bastards kept right on my ass. Worse, the two energy wielders stayed above the ocean, the fire superhero for very obvious reasons, while the other th
ree were in the water and right on my ass.
In essence, I’d just boxed myself in on a stupid gamble and I had two minutes to figure out how to get out of it before I ran out of air. When I’d face Mistral, I’d been struggling hard, and she’d also sucked the air from my lungs, which is why I’d started to black out after just twenty seconds. But at least there in the ocean I had a lungful of oxygenated air and I wasn’t in a panic, though I was getting there.
There was nothing for it, I was going to have to fight them. I did my best to avoid it, but it was what it was. I certainly wasn’t going to lay down and die, I was just determined not to kill again. For one, it was that second kill thing I’d mentioned before, my whole being shied away from the idea of having another life on my soul. Two, I had no idea if these guys were in on the murdering or not, and them being a stupid dupe wasn’t a good reason to die.
Maybe I just needed to be deeper? Just how far would their thermal goggles penetrate cold water?
I dove as I sent out a sonic pressure wave behind me targeting the sounds of their water cavitation right behind me. It didn’t do much, so I sent a stronger one. Then stronger again. I wanted to disable them for a few moments to escape but not kill them, which meant I needed to ramp up my attacks until they were marginally effective and not devastatingly deadly.
I was also running out of air, but the pressure of the deep water didn’t bother me all that much. Like everything else physical, it felt like a nerf hug, though I did feel the cold.
When I was at least two hundred feet down, and I couldn’t see a damned thing above the ocean’s surface, I turned to the right and poured on as much speed as possible. I sent out another pulse of sonics and felt one of them fall off as he let out an underwater scream and then raced for the surface. At a guess, I’d rattled him badly.
Death's Mistress: Origins of Supers: Book One Page 10