Supervillainess (Part One)

by Lizzy Ford

Gary pulled away.

  Kimber tugged the hood of the borrowed sweatshirt over his head and gazed up and down the street, uncertain what part of the strip Keladry was targeting. It was a quiet night. None of the bars and restaurants had lines of customers or crowded entrances. Even so, he estimated there were two to three hundred people present along the block.

  That Keladry considered this minimal collateral damage left him questioning himself anew. The bitch was crazy enough to blow up the street.

  “What’re you doing here, Kimber?” he asked himself. “You’re no hero.”

  He was debating what to do, and how to find her, when a sleek, black car pulled up in front of him and stopped.

  Igor got out. “Doc, you can’t be here tonight,” he called.

  Here I go. Kimber drew a deep breath. “Where’s Keladry?” he asked.

  “Boss is busy. She wants you gone from here.”

  “Remind her she’s not my boss,” Kimber replied, irritated. “And I’m not leaving. She’ll have to blow up the block with me here.”

  Igor leaned down to grab a radio from his car. He spoke quietly into it. Before he could convey what Kimber suspected was another of Keladry’s orders, a second car – a silver Aston Martin – pulled up behind Igor’s.

  The protective nanny yanked out his weapon without hesitation.

  “Whoa, big guy,” Jermaine said, stepping out of the driver’s side. “I’m here to talk. Good ole daddy wants the doc alive for now.”

  Kimber’s brow furrowed. He glanced at Igor, who hadn’t moved or lowered the weapon. “You should’ve thought of that yesterday when you tried to blow me up in the ER,” he snapped.

  “I figured you’d escape. You have a knack for surviving,” Jermaine replied with a smile. “I’m here to offer you a deal, Doc.”

  “What could you possibly have to offer me?” Kimber replied.

  “I’ll drop you off at the city limits, unharmed, if you reveal the reason behind why you moved here to Sand City.”

  Kimber’s brow furrowed. “That’s a pretty specific question, one your father already asked me,” he said. “It wasn’t to become a superhero, if that’s what you think.”

  “Then what’re you doing here tonight? You aren’t exactly dressed for a dining experience,” Jermaine said dryly.

  “It’s not your concern, Jermaine.”

  “Thunder,” the savage twin corrected him.

  Kimber rolled his eyes. “What do you want?”

  “My deal. Will you take it?” Jermaine asked.

  “Why does it matter why I moved here?”

  Jermaine glanced at Igor, who was frowning fiercely, his gun arm still raised and his other hand clenching the radio. “What do you know of our games, Doc?”

  “More than I’d like to. You and your sister are competing to become your father’s successor by destroying the city and hurting innocent people.”

  “Yes, but there’s more. Our father sends us tasks to complete, and whichever sibling completes the task first, wins that round. The game then advances to the next level.”

  “Reader forbids you from speaking of this,” Igor said flatly to Jermaine.

  “I don’t see her around.” Jermaine flung out his arms. “Tell her if she has something to say to me, to bring her ass here and not talk through a puppet! We’re both disarmed by the doctor so long as we stand within fifteen feet of him.”

  “She’s on her way.”

  “Good.” Jermaine returned his attention to Kimber. “Look, Doc, it’s in your best interest to leave town and it’s the only way you’ll outlive our games. It’s not like you have a place to live or work here anyway.”

  The reminder stung, but rather than feel remotely swayed by Jermaine, Kimber grew angrier, as he had the first time he confronted Keladry’s twin.

  “Five million people in Sand City, and I’m the only one willing to tell you to go fuck yourself,” he said.

  Jermaine scowled. “Publicly, might I add. I’ve been watching the fucking video one of the patients in the ER posted on YouTube. I’m not at all happy with you, Doc.”

  “I don’t give a shit. If anyone is thrown out of the city, it should be you and the rest of your family.”

  “He’s stalling!” Reader said, striding out of an alley nearby. Her eyes were fiery, her form tense. “Thanks to you, Doc, I’m going to miss this opportunity to dispose of my brother’s backup ammo depo beneath the street!”

  “If it saves the lives of everyone on the block, I’m okay with that,” Kimber replied.

  Reader’s glare left him and settled on her brother. Her jaw clenched. “I already won this round, asshole.”

  “Oh?” Jermaine asked with faux innocence. “I hadn’t heard. Does the doctor know what the task was?”

  “I don’t care.” Kimber folded his arms across his chest.

  “Father told us to find out why you left Chicago, using any means necessary, short of death,” Jermaine ignored him. “I planned to torture you, but I hear my sister found a more creative route.”

  “What …” The superhero application. Kimber looked at Keladry, and it dawned on him she’d been toying with him earlier. Their alleged connection, her warning about avoiding the bar district tonight, her claim to want to protect him … did she manipulate him, so she could win some stupid game? “You told your family why I left Chicago?”

  “Of course she did. It was part of the game,” Jermaine answered for her.

  Keladry glanced at Kimber then back. “Sorry, Doc. I had to.”

  “You’d betray anyone you had to in order to become your father’s successor.”

  “Pretty sure that’s a given when you deal with a supervillainess,” she replied.

  Kimber clenched his jaw. The rational side of him whispered for him not to be surprised, that he had always known what she was, while his feelings were scorched by the betrayal of his trust. He didn’t want anyone knowing about his past, let alone the three people in the city he definitely couldn’t trust. She’d revealed his secret to her fucked up family.

  It wasn’t the first time Keladry Savage had surprised him, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. It didn’t change what he thought he saw in her, but he made a mental note to watch what he said around her.

  “No deal, Jermaine,” he spoke quietly. “I’m here to stay for now. I plan on becoming an obstacle to both of you as much as possible. This city deserves better.”

  “And you think you can stop us?” Jermaine challenged.

  “Someone has to try.”

  “New deal. This one is for you, sis,” the villain said, gaze on Keladry. “Kill him, and you and I can become what we once were, a team capable of taking out our asshole of a father.”

  Kimber’s breath caught. He didn’t need to see Keladry’s expression to know this was the one thing her brother could offer her that she actually wanted. He had witnessed the look on her face the day she revealed her brother tried to kill her, and again earlier, when she admitted to not being able to murder him when she had the chance.

  “I thought you said it wasn’t possible,” Keladry said guardedly after a pause.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” her brother replied. “Our father has tried to drive us apart for the past year. What if the only way to beat him is to work together?”

  Kimber studied Jermaine, sensing deception. Keladry’s head was tilted to the side, as if she were attempting to read his mind. If what they said was true, she couldn’t, not when Kimber was so close to her. Was Jermaine counting on Kimber’s alleged power to block his lies?

  The protective instinct stirred, and Kimber had the urge to punch Jermaine.

  “I don’t believe you,” Keladry said in a hard tone.

  “Really? I give you a choice between this fool and your own brother, and you choose him?” Jermaine snarled.

  “I’m not choosing anyone until you convince me everything you said the other night no longer applies!” she snapped.

  “Leave me o
ut of this,” Kimber added. “This issue between you two existed long before me.”

  “You put yourself in the middle, Doc, the night you saved my sister,” Jermaine shot back.

  “Because you tried to murder her! You can’t believe a word he says, Keladry.”

  “I know what I’m doing, Doc,” she snapped at him before focusing again on her brother. “Are you serious, Jermaine?”

  Kimber glanced at Igor, whose features were long with worry. The nanny wasn’t buying Jermaine’s sincerity anymore than Kimber was. Was Keladry?

  “I am,” Jermaine said firmly. He approached his sister and stopped in front of her, hands clasped behind his back. “If you don’t want him dead, then exile him. Take him to the city limits. I’m willing to bend, if it means we’ll team up against father again and win the city.”

  “Father said not to kill him, so this isn’t you bending. It’s me not taking your bait,” Keladry said.

  “That was this level of the games,” Jermaine replied smoothly. “Once the superhero application is approved or rejected, the doctor becomes fair game once more. At which point, Father will probably task us to kill him.”

  She was quiet, pensive, her features betraying nothing about what she thought.

  “I have a choice in this, too,” Kimber said and shifted his weight between his feet, “And I’m not going anywhere. If your father won’t let you kill me, then you can bet I’ll show up wherever you try to cause mayhem in this city and block all your efforts to hurt innocent people.”

  Keladry turned at his calm statement. She motioned to Igor. “Put him in the car.”

  Jermaine started to smile.

  “My brother as well,” she added.

  “Keladry –” Kimber objected.

  “Reader –” her brother said simultaneously.

  “Both of you get in the fucking car, or my ninjas end you where you stand!” she shouted.

  On cue, masked men in black materialized out of the shadows surrounding them. No less than fifty of them circled the two cars and four people.

  Keladry got into the passenger seat and closed the door. Igor circled the car and opened the door to the backseat, motioning to Kimber and Jermaine to get in.

  Kimber cursed silently as he realized he had no real choice. Whatever Keladry’s plan was, he would rather wait and find out than die where he stood. He got into the car first, frustrated, his mind racing as he considered his options. He was unarmed and alone with two dangerous criminals. What chance did he have to survive?

  Jermaine slid into the seat beside him. The tension in the car was stifling, and Igor turned on the air conditioner as he pulled away from the curb.

  The sense of being utterly alone, of being the one in five million willing to try to stop the Savage twins, fed Kimber’s uncertainty about what was likely to happen. Whatever connection he experienced – or thought he did – with Keladry was nothing compared to the lifelong alliance she had with her brother. Part of him was convinced they were headed to the city line, while the other part of him expected Igor to take them to the river, where Keladry would shoot him and dump his body.

  Helplessness was an enemy Kimber knew and hated after his struggle to recover from drug addiction. He’d experienced it during his fall to rock bottom then again when he was sober enough to understand the damage he’d done to those he cared about, to his own career and life. The final overdose meant to kill him came after his first month in rehab, when he realized the extent of suffering he had caused and decided he’d rather not live with this burden.

  But he hadn’t died. He should have, but didn’t, and he awoke from a week-long coma with a renewed sense of purpose: to help others like himself as penance.

  Seated in the backseat of the car, in the company of the Savage twins, he couldn’t stop thinking he wasn’t helping anyone by dying tonight or being exiled from the city.

  Igor drove them through the downtown area. They were followed by a train of six or seven more dark cars, though Kimber wasn’t able to identify if Keladry or Jermaine’s henchmen followed.

  As he watched the city lights and buildings morph into the suburbs, Kimber experienced an unexpected sense of loss. He didn’t want to leave the strange city that had accepted him when no one else would. He’d found a place that needed him as much as he needed it, a city suffering from the choice it’d made at some point in its past not to fight the supervillain-mob boss that controlled it.

  One choice shouldn’t condemn someone forever. He’d learned this firsthand.

  Maybe fate or luck had brought him here to give the city the same second chance he’d been provided. How he was supposed to do that, he couldn’t begin to imagine, but it had something to do with stepping between the twins and the city.

  Too soon, Igor slowed the car.

  Kimber’s heart began to race, and he gazed out the window. In the distance, the city’s lights lit up the underbellies of the low clouds and formed a halo around Sand City.

  The other three occupants of the car got out. Kimber followed their leads more slowly. He had no weapons and doubted he’d be able to fight off all of them to escape. He’d come up with no decent alternative and silently cursed at his lack of plan for surviving.

  “There it is,” Jermaine said.

  Kimber looked up. A white sign was just ahead of the car on the side of the road.

  End Sand City Limits, it read.

  “Go, Doc,” Keladry said.

  He faced her. Her gaze was hard. Anything he wanted to say to her died on his lips when he saw her implacable expression. It was then another thought bubbled forth from the maddening flurry in his mind. If fate had brought him here, it had also planted Keladry Savage directly into his life.

  Maybe he didn’t need to save the city. Maybe he just needed to save her. He had seen the small ember of goodness in her heart that led her to help the people in his apartment building and to offer him protection.

  “Can we talk?” he asked.

  Jermaine snorted.

  Keladry rolled her eyes but motioned for him to follow her. She led him a few feet away, out of earshot from the others.

  “What?” she demanded.

  Ignoring her defensive bluntness, Kimber drew a breath. “Have you ever considered leaving Sand City?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should think about it.”

  “Why would I?” She appeared confused.

  “Come with me, Keladry,” he said quietly.

  Why did I say that? He thought, startled by his own words. When had he stopped viewing her as crazy and started to see her as the complicated woman she was? He didn’t know – but he didn’t regret what he’d said, either.

  She gazed up at him, eyes widening in surprise. “You want me to request a transfer through the Supervillain Council?”

  “Not exactly.” Kimber cleared his throat. “We can go somewhere where this villain insanity doesn’t exist, where you aren’t forced into these games,” he added with a glance towards the others. “We can both start over.” He resisted the urge to say more, to add too much meaning to an idea that sounded reckless the moment he gave it life by speaking it aloud.

  “You want me to give up being a supervillain,” she said.

  “Yes. You can do anything, go anywhere, be anyone. You can be good and walk away from the mob and life of crime before you end up dead or broken.”

  “You want me to give up being me.”

  “Don’t you think you’re taking this supervillain … thing too far? I mean, they aren’t real, outside of Sand City.”

  “You want me to give up being me,” she repeated, anger flashing in her gaze. “I wouldn’t ask you to become a supervillain. I know it’s not who you are.”

  “I’m not a superhero either, and you signed me up for it,” he pointed out.

  “Becoming Sand City’s superhero would keep you in the city!”

  “Is that why you did it, or was it for your daddy’s latest challenge?”

&nb
sp; “Both!” Keladry drew her weapon. “If you have a reason to stay, you won’t leave like you did Chicago!”

  “What happens if I stay? I become your mortal enemy? If you want me to stay, why would you make us enemies?”

  Her jaw ticked, and her eyes were stormy. She didn’t answer.

  “Look. I don’t want to argue about it,” he said, sensing she was preparing to either shoot him or walk away from him. “But I mean it. If you want to come with me, we can start over somewhere else.”

  “But only if I change.”

  “You’re a good person, or at least, you have the potential to become very good. You don’t have to change,” he said, perplexed. “I don’t mean that you need to be different. Just … be the person you already are buried beneath the black jumpsuits and mask.”

  She studied him. She was tense again, and he had the feeling he’d only managed to piss her off more. Reviewing what he’d said, he had to admit it sounded worse out loud than it had in his head.

  “You want me to become something I’m not, if I stay,” he continued. “How is what I’m asking any different?”

  “You’ve never been able to see what’s in front of you.” She bit off the words. “You don’t choose to be a villain or hero. It’s a calling, one that’s been knocking at your door since you found me in the alley!”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not that person, Keladry,” he said.

  Keladry took a step back then two. She spun and started back towards the car, where Igor and her brother waited.

  Kimber rubbed the back of his head, frustrated, and turned towards the sign, wishing he’d phrased his request differently while also relieved she hadn’t agreed. With nowhere to go and no idea how she would handle a life outside of Sand City, her agreement would send him nose diving into more trouble than he was already in. Was it so wrong, to want her to go with him, even if he couldn’t identify what he felt about the possibility?

  The sound of a gunshot pierced the night.

  Kimber jumped and then turned.

  Jermaine dropped to the ground, a bullet hole in his forehead and the back of his head blown off. Keladry lowered the weapon and gazed down at the body of her brother.

  Igor’s startled look mirrored Kimber’s.