Supervillainess (Part One)

by Lizzy Ford

  “If you’ll follow me.”

  His gaze went from what appeared to be a genuine Picasso hanging on the wall of the waiting room to the nurse in purple scrubs walking down another hallway.

  Kimber trailed her as requested. This hall was short compared to the one with all the rooms and emptied out onto a wide veranda containing a fire pit and several seating areas. Only one other person was present, a man with salt and pepper hair. Kimber’s gaze was drawn to the spectacular view over the railing. The setting sun had painted the sky in brilliant orange, pink, purple, and yellow.

  Where the hell am I? He thought, mesmerized by the scenic view of Sand City at sunset from a high enough elevation, he was able to see the river that wound through the city. He had never paid much attention to the surroundings of the city, never noticed this tree-covered mountain overlooking it.

  “Have a seat, Doctor Wellington,” said the gentleman whose back was to him.

  Kimber went to the chair beside the stranger and tensed.

  General Savage was even more imposing in person. A bear of a man with harsh features and a mask covering the upper half of his face, the alleged supervillain was gazing out over the city he controlled through a combination of fear and crime.

  “What do you want from me?” Kimber asked quietly.

  “To talk.” The supervillain tapped the arm of the chair beside him.

  Kimber sat, not because General Savage wanted him to, but because he suddenly realized how he was going to deal with the twins. If they weren’t going to try to curb their behavior, maybe he could convince their father to rein them in.

  Stretching his neck back, Kimber grimaced. He was stiff and sore, but at least he was starting to feel more like himself and less like he woke up in a stranger’s body.

  “No painkillers,” General Savage said.

  “Pardon?” Kimber replied.

  “I told them not to use painkillers. Didn’t want to trigger your addiction.”

  Kimber’s breath caught.

  “You’re surprised I’d look into your background before inviting you here?” General Savage asked, amused.

  “Invitation implies you asked me instead of kidnapping me,” Kimber answered.

  “I figured it was time for us to meet.”

  “How so?”

  General Savage handed him a newspaper. It was dated what he assumed was today, the day after the incident at the ER.

  “Wow. I was out for a day,” he muttered.

  Doctor Hero Stands up to Villain, Saves More Lives! Screamed the headline. Sand City Finally Has a Superhero! Claimed a second.

  “I wish they would stop this,” Kimber muttered and dropped the newspaper on the ground. How long would it take for someone to discover the truth, that the fire and ER incident were his fault because of his association with the crime family?

  “You don’t want to be a superhero?” General Savage asked.

  “Of course not. I want your family out of my life.”

  General Savage retrieved the newspaper. “Even Reader?”

  “Especially Reader. She’s the reason this mess started.”

  “Interesting. I thought you had a part in this.” He held out the newspaper again.

  “A part in what?” Kimber asked. “The ER incident?”

  “No. This.” The supervillain flipped the paper and tapped a much smaller article on the front page.

  Kimber accepted the paper reluctantly and scanned the title.

  Apartment Fire Victims All Win the Lottery on Same Day

  He re-read it and then continued on to the rest of the article, which gave no real insight into what had happened. It listed the names and ages of all the people who won and the date of the drawing. The chances of all of them winning on the same day was too coincidental to be real.

  “What does this have to do with me? Or being here?” Kimber asked.

  “Considering none of them had a ticket, I’d say it’s pretty lucky your former neighbors all won the lottery.”

  “You can’t believe I had anything to do with this. If you found out about Chicago, then you know I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “No, but I do,” General Savage replied. “My family has a policy of steal it, keep it. Ninety million dollars went missing from one of my accounts. It’s not an unusual occurrence, but the kids usually don’t take that much. It was funneled into the lottery commission, which was paid off to announce winners, not winning numbers.”

  Kimber listened.

  “You didn’t put Reader up to this?” the supervillain asked, looking at him straight on for the first time. His eyes were cold, his stare direct.

  “No,” Kimber replied. “You think she did this?” He lifted the paper.

  “I know one of them did. Thunder wouldn’t dare oppose me after last year, but Reader … she has always been too different.”

  Igor’s explanation of the twins circled in Kimber’s brain as General Savage spoke. He recalled Igor’s hesitancy to say exactly what had been done to Jermaine, and how the dedicated nanny held out hope for Keladry to become the good kind of supervillain. The dynamics of the crime family were beyond Kimber’s ability to understand fully, but he sensed the supervillain beside him was pleased for some reason. It couldn’t have been because of the loss of money, or Keladry giving it away to help people, which seemed to act counter to what a villain did.

  “This skill of yours. How does it work?” General Savage asked.

  “Skill? You mean being a doctor?”

  Another unsettling, direct, unblinking look rested on Kimber. It left him wanting to shiver or perhaps, to move his chair away a few inches.

  “You have a skill, just as we do. Yours appears to be blocking ours.”

  “So you can’t demonstrate your superpower when I’m around,” Kimber said. He didn’t roll his eyes but wanted to. It was too convenient that the alleged villains with superpowers couldn’t actually do anything superhuman at all. How had the local media ever fallen for any of this shit?

  “Correct. I assumed you were in town, rescuing people, because you chose Sand City to start your superhero career.”

  “No.” Kimber snorted. “I’m a former drug addict trying to make up for shitty decisions from my past. I just want to go to work and go home to my shitty apartment. But it looks like both of those have been burnt down.”

  “You seem to be an honest man.” The supervillain smiled, as if entertained by the idea someone like Kimber existed. He rose. “My people will take you back to the hospital.” He started away.

  Kimber stood, caught off guard by the sudden dismissal. “That’s all you wanted to know? If I have intentions of being a superhero?”

  “I also wanted to know if you were influencing my daughter, undoing years of special conditioning.”

  “You mean torturing her as a child.”

  “How else do you think supervillains are made? Through personal suffering and disillusion.”

  “She’s your daughter!”

  “And I’ve finally found another of her weaknesses.” This smile was chilling.

  Kimber frowned. Jermaine had said something similar. How could they both be so misinformed?

  “Moving on,” Kimber said, not about to lose his chance to confront the criminal mastermind. “Your kids are destroying the city. Innocent people are dying horrible deaths, and the amount of money this will cost the city to clean up is far beyond the ninety million you’ve already lost.”

  “Not sure about Chicago, but that’s what villains do here.”

  “You can stop it.”

  “Why would I want to? The winner of these games is my successor.”

  “You mean the survivor, don’t you? Whichever sibling kills the other is the winner.”

  “You catch on quickly, Doc,” General Savage replied. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of their way. It’ll settle down when one of them is dead.”

  The words shocked Kimber, as much because they were spoken
by the father of the twin who would die, as because of the callous regard he had for those caught in the crossfire.

  “You can’t mean that,” Kimber whispered. “You can’t want one of your own children to die.”

  “I killed my parents, my brother, my uncles, an aunt and over a hundred thousand humans to become what I am,” the supervillain said without flinching or any sign of emotion. “My children each have that potential. What I want is for them to remain focused on the prize: Sand City. Whichever one of them wants it more will win the games.”

  “You’re worse than they are.”

  “Where do you think they get it from?” the supervillain replied. “For some reason, my children put you in the middle of their games. I didn’t understand it at first, but after meeting you, I think I do. I see opportunity here as well as they do. I’m glad I made you part of this.”

  Kimber didn’t want to know what that meant. “If you won’t stop them, I’ll find someone who will.”

  “Good luck.” General Savage disappeared into the darker interior of the compound on whose veranda Kimber stood.

  What the fuck was wrong with everyone in this family? Kimber couldn’t imagine how this much dysfunction existed in one place. Compared to her brother and father, Keladry was beginning to look moderate, despite being willing to burn down an entire apartment building while its residents slept.

  Lifting the paper once more, Kimber studied the article. Had Keladry really stolen her father’s money and made millionaires out of the homeless families from the apartment fire? If so, why did the General want to know if Kimber was involved?

  … If you want to help someone, help those people who are homeless because you decided to burn down my apartment building.

  The words he’d spoken to her in anger emerged from the depths of his mind, and he began to connect the dots.

  Keladry had acted because of what he said. Her father noticed, as did her brother. They did some digging and found … him.

  “You did this because of me? For me? In my name?” he asked the newspaper under his breath, not understanding her motivation. She had been an absolute bitch to deal with as a patient and every second he’d known her since she left. How could anyone mistake her motivations as being directed, or influenced, by him?

  In the end, it was too far of a stretch for him to believe he had been the one to convince her to do anything, let alone something decent. It had to be a coincidence.

  “Mister Wellington.” A woman in a driver’s cap stood in the hallway. “Please follow me.”

  Kimber left the newspaper on a nearby chair and trailed her into the compound. They walked through long hallways and short, past intersections leading into other parts of the supervillain’s lair and down into an underground basement featuring dozens of antique and collectible cars. The driver slid behind the wheel of a black Rolls Royce.

  Kimber got in back and put on his seatbelt. He gazed out the window as the vehicle whisked him down a winding road from the top of the mountain he didn’t know existed to the bottom and onward to the freeway.

  He dreaded discovering who had been hurt and how bad the damage was to the hospital but found himself preoccupied by another thought.

  Was it really possible that Keladry had given the residents of his former apartment building money for the sole reason that he told her to?

  The baffling notion she had helped the same people whose homes she had destroyed without a second thought sent Kimber’s mind spinning in loops. To think Keladry could modify the behavior and a world view beaten into her since she was a child, that she had done something almost good, because he had told her it was the right thing to do …

  Something about her has always confused me, Kimber admitted. He had never viewed her as strictly a patient after the first night in his apartment. He couldn’t explain what he didn’t understand, except that Keladry captured his attention in a way no one else in his recent history had. Was it their connection, the night she told him who had almost killed her? The sense of destiny that took hold of him whenever they crossed paths?

  It was also possible there was no correlation between what he said and what Keladry did, that he was once again trying to read too deeply into the words and intentions of a woman who belonged in a psych ward. Kimber tried to reason his way out of thinking well of the crazy woman, but kept circling back to the newspaper article.

  Keladry and the rest of her family were lunatics.

  Then why did he once more find it impossible to purge her completely from his thoughts?

  Eleven: Villains create heroes

  Kimber stepped out of the Rolls and closed the door. The sleek, dark car slid away, leaving him on the sidewalk. His bare feet were immersed in a cold puddle, and he contemplated the latest problem in front of him.

  One wing of the hospital appeared to be out of commission, if the darkened windows were any indication. The ER and ambulance entrance were cordoned off by police tape. He was effectively homeless and possibly, jobless, unless the administration had transferred the ER staff temporarily into other departments. Familiar despair slid through him, though he tried to tell himself this time, his loss of identity and purpose was different. He had done it to himself in Chicago.

  In Sand City, he’d had both stripped from him.

  The circumstances were different, but his feelings remained the same.

  He had failed. Again.

  Kimber wiped his face with his hands, trying to clear away the negative thoughts threatening to drag him down. After his meeting with the city’s supervillain, he couldn’t help wondering what would come next. The city had to be out of surprises for him by now. Even if it weren’t, he began to think nothing else could faze him again.

  “Doctor Wellington?” a curious voice called.

  Kimber glanced towards the group of people crossing the road then back, recognizing the nurses Gary and Anna. Warmth crept up his neck as he realized he had neither shoes nor jacket to keep the drizzle off. He looked homeless – which he was.

  “We’ve been worried sick! You disappeared yesterday after the bombing!” Anna exclaimed.

  They excused themselves from the other members of their party and approached him. Kimber shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to portray normal, whatever that was anymore.

  “Yeah. I ended up in a medical center across town,” he hedged. “How about you? You guys okay?”

  “Bruises,” Gary replied. “Because of you, we all made it out of there alive.”

  Except for the three people who expired while I napped, Kimber said silently, recalling the bodies under sheets that had been tucked away from public sight behind the nurses’ station.

  Gary and Anna were smiling at him as if they truly believed he had saved them. Kimber wanted to dissuade them with the truth but couldn’t muster the will to reveal how he’d been responsible.

  “What’re they doing with the staff while the ER is rebuilt?” he asked instead.

  “We’re all on admin leave for a week. We’re supposed to heal up and attend a group counseling session,” Anna answered. “I think they’re trying to figure out what to do with everyone.”

  “Tish?”

  “She’s on admin leave, too,” Gary answered. “The explosion took out the offices on the fourth floor.”

  There goes any shot I have at a place to sleep, Kimber thought. “This has been an awful couple of weeks,” he murmured, eyes across the street on the bombed out ER.

  “Oh, that’s right. You’ve been living at the hospital since your apartment building burned down,” Gary remarked.

  “Do you need a place to stay?” Anna asked.

  Embarrassed, Kimber attempted to formulate a response. His hesitation was answer enough to his new friends.

  “You’re staying with us!” Gary said.

  “No, I couldn’t –”

  “Do you have anywhere else to go?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t even have shoes,” Kimber said, releasing the breath he
had been holding. “But I really don’t want to impose.”

  “We won’t hear of you refusing,” Gary replied firmly.

  Kimber studied him, torn as always by the attempts of those around him to get to know him better and his innate fear of disappointing everyone who mattered to him.

  What other option did he have? Keladry’s townhouse?

  “Maybe for a day or two,” he allowed. “I’ll have to find a new place.”

  “And shoes,” Anna teased with a smile.

  “Come on!” Gary motioned for him to follow. Anna slid her hand into his, and the couple walked down the street, towards one of the cars parked alongside the road.

  Kimber followed, unable to shake the feeling it was wrong of him to accept help from anyone. He didn’t deserve their kindness, and they didn’t deserve the supervillain messes he attracted.

  But he went, because he had no other choice. He didn’t even have his wallet or any belongings. How long would it take to re-establish his identity so he could access his bank account?

  Anger trickled through him. This time, it wasn’t directed at members of the Savage family but at himself. How did he continually end up in such dire straits? Would he flee Sand City as he had Chicago? If so, where would he go?

  Pensive, he managed to make small talk with Gary and Anna as they drove to their apartment downtown. They lived a few buildings over from Kimber’s former apartment, in an area noticeably nicer than the run down street he had chosen.

  It was with some relief he stepped into their flat. His feet were almost numb from the wet and cold. His toes sank into the thick carpet, and he glanced around, beginning to understand just how horrible his place had been. The carpet at Gary’s appeared new, and his walls showed neither cracks nor water damage. Anna led him to the guestroom, which contained a day bed and chest of drawers, on top of which sat a television and aging pink DVD player.

  “It’s not much. I hope it’s okay,” Anna said.

  “It’s perfect. More than I’ve had the past week and a half.” Kimber saw no flaws with the warm, dry, pleasant room.

  “Gary has some spare clothes in the bottom two drawers. You’re welcome to them.”

  “Thanks.”