Most people would look at this as a perfect beginning to a beautiful life. But no origin story gets to stay this well put-together.
The first job offer had gone under when the company got too wrapped up in its own politics to notice that the CFO was stealing from the company and had (with much apology) let Soren go. It hadn't been hard to find a new job, working as a support tech for one of the major businesses in town. Most of their employees worked remotely. As such, when there was an issue they needed someone at the home base who could interface both with them and with the home computer to see what the problem was, Soren was the perfect solution. He was a genius with computers and young enough to not trigger any of the “replacement” complexes people could get because “he was just a kid; how would he steal their jobs?” Soren was more than happy to keep them believing that; after all, he didn't want their jobs, so it wasn't even false. He sat in his office, perfectly content to be a cubicle worker and enjoyed the fact that the building—at least on his side—had a decent view of the city.
But as is often the case, poor innocent buildings with nice views are frequently the first casualties when superpowers get into a fight.
He'd been working late, trying to figure out a bug in the head of marketing's station, when the fight brought itself through their front wall. From the smoke filling the building, it had to be Inferno causing all the trouble—which meant her good-side nemesis Renegade wasn't too far behind. Soren did his best to get the few employees who were there with him out before anything worse happened. Leave it to him to be the furthest one from the ground floor. He grabbed the night security guard on his way out and tried to hurry down the stairs.
Of course, in the stairwell, he hadn't a chance to react when Inferno took off and lit the whole damn place on fire. He didn't get himself or the guard to the door before passing out from smoke inhalation—before feeling the flames at his heels. He was sure he was a goner.
But he hadn't been. He woke up in the hospital and learned it was four days later. The police, overtaxed and underpaid, managed to get to the collapsed building in short order and found both Soren and his coworker under the wreckage. The coworker, Tyree, hadn't made it. Renegade had issued an apology to the man's family.
Soren asked. Renegade hadn't been in to see him. They'd told her, he heard, that there was another survivor, but he wasn't doing well. She expressed her relief that he survived… but she hadn't been in to see him.
It figured. The dead got a memorial. The living just got to keep working.
There had been a cop—a stupidly, stunningly gorgeous one, to Soren's somewhat morphine-addled memory—who did come by. He'd been the one to find Soren and Tyree, and he wanted to keep tabs on Soren to see how he was healing. And there… there was the price to be paid for having his life saved in the first place.
The smoke and fire destroyed his throat and taken a good chunk of his lungs with it. He couldn't speak anymore—couldn't overexert himself. After the broken ankle and wrist (and he was lucky it was only those injuries, when the building collapsed) healed, he'd be able to walk and type again… but he wasn't ever going to be a runner.
Fine. He didn't need a voice or to run in order to be a programmer. But it did mean his job options were going to shrink. Anything where he needed to directly interact with people would have to go. His current job might be able to find a way to work with him, but they had so much on their hands with the reconstruction of the building…
The bitterness seeping into him was expected. These people—these superpeople—were supposed to be helping the community. Instead, they fought each other in personal vendettas and burned down buildings and killed innocent bystanders. How many times had Soren seen high-rises come tumbling down because some idiot had struck it with one too many bolts of lightning? How many people died in those incidents? Did they all get personal recognition? How many families lost children because of the “heroes” of the town, let alone the villains?
Too many. That was the answer. Even one, even just Tyree, was too many. They were supposed to be helping the populace. They were supposed to be heroes.
So Soren did what any logical tech-savvy person would do after this kind of situation. He used it to his advantage.
Secret identities were only as good as their creators, and none of the local heroes or villains were very tech-smart. It took a week to figure out the name behind Renegade. Another four days passed before he knew who Inferno was. By three weeks in, he had every record available on them. And by a month later, their bank accounts were his. Inferno—Cassie Martin—was a classic story out of the comic books, a spoiled rich kid who'd learned how to harness fire with a snap of her fingers. Renegade—Christine Bennett—was a little less expected. She wasn't rich. In fact, she had a day job that Soren had seen her in before. She genuinely wanted to keep Inferno under control, however, so she'd taken the law into her own hands. As far as he could tell, she had chemistry-minded friends who gave her the weapons he'd seen her use.
He started by rerouting money from Inferno, scattering it between bank accounts and random charities for burn victims. He merely wiped out Renegade. Simple girl from the suburbs be damned. That was what she'd get for forgetting the ones who lived.
The power was heady. Within a week of his work, he could see the effects in the news. Renegade faded for the time being, as Christine made headlines as she searched for the culprit behind the theft. Inferno stayed publicly silent, but Soren saw the traces in the Internet, looking for where her money was going. But he was smarter than them. He'd built his computer from the ground up, operating system included. He knew more back-door shortcuts than even the finest hackers Inferno could buy. He'd made most of them for himself and knew exactly when to pull the plug on them. Who was going to stop him?
And who said there was a limit? He knew the codenames of the heroes and villains from other cities. Who said he needed to only target the ones who'd done him wrong? He lost himself in the work, tracking down every superhero and supervillain he could, playing Robin Hood with them. Never enough to bring them to their knees… just enough to make them feel the leash tugging at their throats.
It wasn't until he made headlines himself that he realized he'd become a supervillain of his own kind.
Enough heroes had come forward under their pseudonyms and started looking into police records so news stations got wind that someone, some hacker of elite skills, was targeting superheroes. A week later, the villains started complaining, too—albeit, a bit more covertly, since they didn't want to get caught, either. The news went crazy. A hacker targeting superpeople of all kinds? They were the ones who made Soren the Robin Hood of the elite, the supervillain of supervillains. They struggled to give him a catchy name, though; was he good or bad? He was a thief, yes, but no one could tell where the money was going or why he was doing it. In the end, they called him the Binary Bandit, and he laughed to himself.
He didn't have a better name, but they'd be hard-pressed to come up with one worse. The second best he'd heard had shown up in a sideline tabloid a few days later: the Leveler, for bringing hero and villain to the same playing field. It was fine, but it'd never stick. Part of Soren was sad about that. It had a nice ring to it.
Enough of the money got shunted back to him—covertly, of course; he didn't want to get caught—to keep him surviving. Through freelance work, he still kept up a reasonable living through the powers of the Internet.
Three months after the accident, there was a knock at the door.
Caught already? But he'd only started, and he was actually enjoying himself. He took as deep of a breath as he could, opened the door—and remembered that there had been a payout, as well as a price, for his time in the hospital.
Because the cop had come back—and he wasn't just a figment of Soren's drugged mind after all.
Office Jake Harker, not much older than Soren himself. Tall and well-built, dusty brown hair cropped like a Navy SEAL, hazel eyes sharp, even when he shielded them with his
classic TV-cop-standard aviators. Soren had seen him more times than they'd ever spoken—or rather, Harker had spoken and Soren had nodded or shook his head—but they'd established enough to know who he was and why he was there. Soren remembered a moment of Harker offering if there was ever anything he could do, just ask for him at the precinct, and there wouldn't be an issue, but by the time Soren's head was clearly enough to write a response, Harker had gone.
At least, from the physical world. The subconscious mind was an entirely different story, because what else do you do while recovering in the hospital but fantasize about the hot guy who came to see you?
And until just then, Soren had been able to forget about the stupidly attractive cop who haunted his dreams in all the best ways. But now he was on his front door step, looking entirely out of place—
—and a fucking cop at the door of a newly-minted supervillain fuck.
Soren opened his mouth to greet him and managed an unfortunate sounding squawk which resembled a dying cat more than a welcome. Fuck!
“It's… it's okay, don't stress yourself, Mr. Avalon,” Harker offered quickly, seeing Soren's face flush crimson as his hand went to his mouth. “I know you're not so much on the talking. I… it's been a while, and I wanted to make sure you were still doing okay.”
Soren nodded, still woozy from the embarrassment. God, had he really just done that?
Harker peered in, eyes narrowing at the multiple-screen setup Soren had running at his desk. “You, uh… you got something going on in there?”
Fuck! Soren shook his head quickly, grabbed the tablet he kept by the door, and scribbled a message with a finger before flipping the screen to show Harker.
“Oh.” That made perfect sense, and Soren could see the suspicion slide off of Harker's face. “Sorry, it's…” He shook his head. “Never mind. S'like when you buy a new car, you suddenly see how many people own the same one, ya know? Everything looks suspicious when shit starts going down.”
Soren nodded again, trying to keep his expression sympathetic. Fuck, I am way too suspicious; you have to leave, Harker… But the twist in his stomach wasn't making that an easy suggestion. It had been too long since he'd seen those eyes or those arms. It was too easy to imagine the next scene—the cop realizing that he'd been too long without the hacker's presence as well, those strong arms wrapping around Soren's waist and making him forget he'd ever been even remotely disabled, lips pressing against his neck and throat and chin before finding that spot just behind Soren's ear to press the tip of his tongue against and make Soren's knees go weak…
Shit. Was he talking? And from the looks of it, Harker had been talking—and Soren was giving away something of what he'd been thinking.
“You okay? Your face is kinda red.”
Well that's not going to help it, Soren felt his face heat further. He erased the last message and wrote a new one:
“Ah, gotcha. I asked if there's anything… I can do… to help.” Now it was Harker's turn to blush, and Soren's head tilted in question. “I…” He gestured to Soren's leg and the ankle that never healed the way anyone wanted or hoped. “I feel bad I couldn't do more to help, what with the ankle and the voice.”
Soren shrugged.
“Hah.” Harker shook his head. “You don't owe me anything. I was doing my job. Exactly the kind of shit I became a cop for—if you'll excuse the language.” He scratched the back of his head, sending the brim of his hat down. “I like helping people. And I feel like I let you down.”
Soren gave him a small smile and tipped the officer's hat back into place.
There was an awkward pause, as both of them parsed what had just happened and weren't… quite… sure what to do next. Eventually, Harker broke the silence with a cough. “You can…” He cleared his throat again. “Call me Jake. You're, what, a couple years younger than me?” Soren allowed a shrug for the possibility. “Yeah. It's… you can…” He took a breath. “Call me Jake. That's my… my first name. That's my name.”
Soren couldn't help the smile at how awkward the officer suddenly was.
That got a bit of a smile back from Harker. “Okay. Cool. But… um. You're doing okay? Managing and everything?” Soren nodded again. “Good. Right. I'll… sorry to interrupt.” He tipped his hat. “Have a good day, Mr. Avalon.”
Harker was three paces away before Soren's head snapped back into action, and he smacked a hand into the door in hopes of getting Harker's attention. It worked; the cop stopped and turned around, allowed Soren to gesture to him and write a new message on the screen.
Harker blinked at the screen a few times, but then a small smile showed up. “Sure, Mr. Avalon. That'd be cool.”
The next message was easy.
Harker's smile widened. “Right. Soren. Sorry. Habits, ya know?” He tipped his hat again. “You left a phone number at the station… that a cell number? You get texts?”
“I'll shoot you a text, then. I think I can probably get the number from the report.” Harker hadn't finished the sentence before Soren wrote his cell phone number on the screen and turned it to face the officer. Harker laughed and scribbled the number onto a paper in his pocket. “That'll work, too. I'll let you know, okay?”
Soren nodded and waved as the officer left, closing the door once he drove away—and then really thinking about what he'd done. He was the Leveler, the Binary Bandit… and he asked a cop to get a drink with him.
What the fuck am I doing?
Served him right to fall for the police. Just seemed to be his luck.
***
Two months. Two months of living… what was it by now, a triple life? He had actually picked up freelance IT work, because dammit he liked what he'd been doing, on top of his times with Jake and then his work as the Binary Bandit heaped on for good measure. The press was still having a field day with him, and he was enjoying reading the articles more than anything else he was doing.
But the problem was he was dating a cop.
“What do you think about this?” Jake asked one afternoon, turning the paper to flop in front of Soren. Soren peeked up from his cup of coffee and tablet to look at the headline: not surprisingly, it was about him. Binary Bandit Strikes Again; First Eastern Regains Money Before Heist Is Finished!
“Yeah, but whose side is he—she, I don't even know—on?” The officer pursed his lips. “Half the force wants to find them and pull them in, and then the other half can't figure out if we'd be better or worse off with them in jail.”
“Yeah, I know. There's hacking and theft and probably sixteen other charges. But it's not like they're…” He sighed and turned the paper back around. “This one attacked a supervillain. Last week, half of Fly-by-Night's money got rewired to the DoT after the huge disaster that wrecked the 190 coming out of the city.”
Soren nearly spit out his coffee, caught up by the beginning and missing the rest.
Jake waved a hand. “Yeah, him. Thinks he's so cool with his running around at night, being the best super good guy he can. Fuck if I want him in my city.”
Soren snickered. h to worry about without taking on all the heroes and villains around, Jake.>
“Yeah. But—no seriously, you're the computer guy.” He tapped the paper again. “Is this a good guy or a bad guy? We've had people trying to trace the hacks for a month now, and we keep getting re-routed through, like, Mongolia. We're getting nowhere fast, and Chief wants to know whose side he's on.”
It took all of his willpower to not let his hand shake as he took a sip of coffee before answering.
Jake blinked. “How? It's not like he's some showoff, leaving markers where he goes. He does shit and then vanishes. You want us to put an ad in the paper or something?”
He had to set the mug down; he was going to break it otherwise.
“Maybe.” Jake sipped his coffee and stared at the paper.
Soren tried to keep calm.
This was going to end badly.
***
When his eyes snapped open, it wasn't the lack of light that bothered him or the fact he'd been woken out of a really nice dream about Jake and a pair of handcuffs.
It was that he couldn't read the clock next to his bed through all the smoke.
He tossed the covers aside and fumbled for his glasses, managing to stand up before he saw the figure in his bedroom doorway. Inferno. Fuck. He coughed, trying to blink the smoke away.
“You thought I'd forgotten, did you?” Her voice was silk; she was pissed. “I honestly thought Renegade was smart enough to come and say something to you, but I guess she wasn't. And then you vanished… right off the grid.” Two steps in. He took three back and landed back on the bed. “I was mad when my money vanished, but I've made my share of enemies. It could have been anyone. But then Renegade got wiped out, too. And then the other heroes and the other villains. It couldn't have been coincidence, I thought. So I started searching for connections. There weren't any. People were simply being… wiped out.” She gestured with a single gloved hand. “For no reason… except they were superheroes. Supervillains.”
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