The earthen tower reached the roof and stopped. The Destructor huddled on it in the fetal position. Ember had downplayed his feelings about heights. He wasn’t just afraid, he had a phobia. Beneath my surging adrenaline lurked something almost like pity, because a trembling, sniveling adversary just wasn’t respectable.
Still, I’d rather have jumped off the Bell Building than reveal my true feelings to a supervillain. I stuffed down my pity and worked my face into a steely glare.
I jumped from the roof onto the muddy tower, my boots skidding on the wet pavement and only stopping an inch from his head. He yelped.
“Scared?” I sneered. I lifted him by his shirt with my one working arm, the blood pounding in my ears. “Good.”
I threw him off the tower onto the roof and then jumped after him. He scrambled backwards and held up a hand. “Don’t come any closer! I’ll—I’ll blow us up!”
“You’d have done it already,” I said coolly. Energy manipulation like bomb-making virtually always required the Super to have working hands, so without a word I stomped on the hand clutching the ground with my steel-soled boot while simultaneously crushing the hand he was holding up with my own vise grip. Despite my pity, the crunches and his cry of anguish were highly satisfying.
I mentally reviewed the steps I was supposed to take next. Punch, kick, maim, the usual. But this pathetic man was down, and doing anything else just seemed…mean. I looked at him while he cradled his useless fingers and marveled at the irony of someone so powerful being so weak at the same time.
“You disgust me.” I put my hands on my hips, ignoring his sobs. “I’ve been told to kick your head in, but I think you’ve learned your lesson. The police will be here in a few minutes. Have fun in prison.”
I turned to go to the edge and signal the all-clear. The moment my back was to him, he swiped a leg under my own and I fell.
My injured shoulder took the brunt of the fall, and my head bounced against the ground. He awkwardly ran towards the edge. My groan turned into a growl of anger. That had been a rookie mistake.
“Get back here!” I yelled, jumping up and blinking away white spots in my vision.
He glanced back at me, eyes wide, his fear of heights battling his fear of me. I bridged the gap between us and grabbed his wrist just as he went over the side of the building.
“Let me go,” he pleaded, crying again. “I can’t spend the rest of my life in the Supers’ prison! Have some mercy on a fellow Super.” His wide eyes were slick with terror, but the shooting pain in my shoulder reduced my previous pity to dust. I just wanted this disgusting man out of my sight.
“You didn’t show any mercy to the people down there,” I replied with some difficulty, as he wriggled and pulled against me. Normally pulling a man up with one arm wouldn’t have been a problem, but the pain in my shoulder compromised my strength. A deafening crash of thunder preceded even more sheets of rain. Rivulets of water ran down my arm onto his, making my grasp slippery. A few more minutes of this tug-of-war and the Destructor would get his wish.
Patrick says drop him.
“Shut up, Ember!” I yelled into the storm.
Patrick will catch him.
Yeah, right. Powerful as Patrick was, he struggled to catch falling people—as we’d witnessed during a suicide two months earlier. Gritting my teeth and cursing the Destructor’s ancestors, I ignored Ember’s further protests and with a burst of effort pulled the Destructor back over the edge. A quick punch to the temple knocked him out cold.
He’s down.
Adrenaline drained out of my system and left a cold creep in my veins, the same creep I felt after every mistake and poor judgment call. Though I could feel Ember in my mind, she said nothing. When the police arrived on the roof, I didn’t leave the scene until they asked me to.
Back on the street, Patrick was surrounded by soaked teenage girls holding umbrellas and a copy of a tabloid that had done a feature on “Saint Catherine’s Heroic Heartthrob.” After signing autographs, he fielded questions from reporters. Their ability to converge at a scene just minutes after an incident never failed to amaze me.
One particularly aggressive woman pushed her way to the front and stuck a microphone in his face. “Atropos, how did you feel when you were fighting the Destructor?”
He ducked his head, grinning sheepishly. “Well, every fight is a thrill and a challenge. I didn’t have any time to be scared for myself, though. I’m always one hundred percent concerned about the safety of my team and the citizens of Saint Catherine.”
Another reporter pushed his way to the front of the throng. “Atropos, our readers want to know what it’s like being the leader of a superhero team.”
Patrick’s crooked grin made several girls giggle. “It’s the best job in the world. My team loves me, I love them, and we’re a well-oiled machine.” His eyes flickered towards me.
Nobody else seemed to notice his momentary glare, though Ember clutched my hand. I’m here for you no matter what happens.
The reporter referred to her notes. “Our viewers voted on our final question: any tips for prospective superhero leaders out there?”
What a stupid question. You were born into our life or you weren’t, and leadership was for men in elder families only.
He laughed. “Sure. Lead with a firm hand, and you’ll have the respect of your team and your city.”
The rest of us looked on in the rain while Patrick fed the crowd his smooth replies. We made sure to never stop smiling for the public in case they looked our way, just as we’d been told for years.
After all, if we didn’t smile, people might guess the truth about us.
2
“Jeez, Jill. What did you do to yourself?”
Marco examined my shoulder.
My cousin and I were in the sick bay, a cramped room with peeling white paint, lined with wooden shelves of medicines, pain relievers, bandages, and other supplies. The only furniture was a chair and an examination table made of a material that always stuck to my skin.
“I didn’t do it to myself.” I was unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “A bomb knocked me into a brick wall and then that freak gave me trouble on the roof.”
He prodded my shoulder and frowned deeper. “Well, you were right, it’s a sprain. You’re going to be in a sling for a while. I don’t like the look of those cuts in your neck and leg, either.” He took an arm sling off the shelf and handed it to me. We'd made Marco the team's official medic, simply because he had read more first-aid pamphlets than the rest of us. He’d even understood a few of them.
“That’s just excellent,” I muttered, putting the sling on and securing it. “Every team needs a useless member.”
Marco casually redid my attempt to secure the sling. “Stop that. Nobody on this team will ever be useless.”
I sighed, then pointed to the ugly gash that marred his light brown face. “Does that still hurt?”
He playfully smacked my hand away from his face. “Yeah, but I’m going to have a cool scar to brag about, so who cares?”
The front door slammed. We froze.
“Maybe all the swooning girls improved his mood,” I whispered. Patrick’s stomping footsteps through the house caused my heart to pound.
“In my office, now!” Patrick’s harsh tones made my mouth go dry. His tone made him sound much older than twenty-five.
Marco visibly swallowed. “Maybe a missile will hit the house in the next sixty seconds,” he whispered back. He helped me off the table and gave my shoulder one last worried glance. “Let’s go.”
We walked to Patrick’s office and were joined outside the door by Ember and Reid. Ember’s long red hair still smelled of smoke and death, and her skin was even paler than usual. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Reid’s mouth formed a thin line, and his gray eyes contained the same hard apprehension that curdled in my stomach.
I took a deep breath and opened the door. We all filed in.
Inside, Patrick, tall a
nd blond and terrifying, sat on the edge of his desk with his arms crossed, a look so chilling on his face that I had to fight the urge to step back. “Shut the door.”
Everyone flinched, but he spoke only to me.
I closed the door as quietly as I could, trying not to seem fazed.
Patrick looked directly at me. “Jillian, we’re going to talk about what happened today.”
I gathered my nerve. “We fought the Destructor and won. Because we followed your orders.”
Everyone nodded and murmured agreement. Patrick’s eyes narrowed. I struggled to keep my breathing steady. Already my fight-or-flight instinct was screaming at me to escape.
“If you followed my orders, why didn’t you drop the Destructor?”
The question cut into my core. My eyes itched with tears, but if I let them fall, he’d say I couldn’t control myself.
“Because, um…” My gaze darted around the room as I tried to stifle the shame that my team had to watch what was coming. “Because…”
Patrick abruptly stood and took a step towards me. Everyone else moved back. “Because what, Jill?”
My mind was racing. I couldn’t pick out a coherent answer. Patrick was my leader and I had to listen to him. As a member of a non-elder family in the camp, my position in life was to be under another person’s authority at all times. No exceptions. To defy the authority of my leader was unthinkable—practically as unforgivable as defying an elder directly. The turmoil of being at a loss for words began building up inside of me.
“I was worried he wouldn’t make it,” I finally blurted. “A lot was going on and it was a long fall, you know.”
An invisible force slammed me into the wall.
“How many times do I have to tell you that you do not have permission to question my orders?” He strode towards me. “You stupid, insignificant piece of crap! I let you stay here and this is how you repay me? This is how you treat me? Who are you to question what I’m capable of?”
“I didn’t mean it like that, I swear!” The words struggled to come out through the pressure on my chest and neck. I couldn’t control the tears any longer, and my fear transformed into naked humiliation that my team was watching me not just get punished, but cry about it like a child.
“Then how did you mean it? Were you questioning my authority?” His fist clenched.
Reid moved to stop him, but pulled back his hand after a second, doubt and fear warring on his face.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to whisper as I hung my head, tears dripping down my nose. “I just…I didn’t want him to die.”
“What have I told you? Nobody cares about what you want!” The invisible hand of Patrick’s telekinesis threw me into a bookshelf, where several heavy tomes of Leadership and Wisdom fell on top of me and made my shoulder light up with excruciating pain.
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to stay still. If I kept quiet, there was no way he could think I was fighting his discipline. Marco rushed over to help me up. His hand brushed the laceration at the back of my neck and I could tell that it had opened up again.
“You’re going to make her shoulder worse,” Ember said, her voice shaking.
She crashed into the desk. “Now you’re questioning me?”
My chin lifted against my will, forcing me to look into his hard blue eyes. New tears appeared. The telekinetic force grabbed my collar and hoisted me to my feet. The chalkboard we used for strategy notations floated over and landed next to me. My fingers plucked a piece of chalk from the air.
Patrick crossed his arms. “Draw the chain of command and explain it to us. I want to hear from your own mouth that you know our law.”
I gulped and started sketching, struggling to control my trembling hand. “The chain of command is like an umbrella,” I began, using the same words my teachers had used over the years. “Elders are at the top, followed by team leaders, then your father and mother.” I drew a crude likeness of an umbrella and sectioned it horizontally, labeling the lines. The umbrella analogy was very old, created when people in the camps still had umbrellas.
“Go on.” He gestured for me to continue.
“If you go out from under the umbrella, you’ll be exposed to danger. If you mix up the parts of the umbrella, the umbrella won’t work and you’ll also be exposed to danger.”
Patrick nodded. “Tell me the core character traits of a good superhero.”
Those had been drilled into me since I was three. “Obedience, joy, loyalty, and silence.”
“Tell us how you will model all these traits during our next mission.” His voice was suddenly softer.
I breathed easier now that his ire appeared to be fading. “I’ll obey you without question. I’ll do so happily because you’re my leader, and I’m loyal only to you. And, um, I won’t talk much?” Silence had always struck me as an odd concept to call a “trait.”
Patrick’s face relaxed and he rolled his neck. “You guys all know I don’t enjoy these types of meetings. But I carry the burden of leadership. If you don’t obey, it is my responsibility to discipline you.” He looked at Ember. “Em, we’re going to have a discussion tomorrow about interrupting me during discipline sessions.”
She gulped and nodded. Even though I could still feel the tingle in my injuries from his punishment just minutes ago, I had to quash the desire to beg him to not hurt Ember, too. Was I demented?
With that, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room. I’d survived.
We were all slow to move.
“At least he only wanted the four traits. I’d have been screwed if I had to list the principles under pressure,” Marco said, erasing my drawing on the board and sliding it back to its storage place.
“I can review them with you,” Reid offered, gently brushing chalk dust off my arm. “Cautiousness, deference, deci—”
Ember bent down to help me pick up the books that had fallen. “Spare us. That’s the last thing we need right now. Jill, how’re you doing?”
“My shoulder hurts,” I mumbled, trying not to sniffle. “I’m going to go to the clinic.” The free clinic downtown was our answer to injuries that basic first aid couldn’t address. Most of their patients came in with gunshot wounds and knives sticking out of them, so they didn’t ask questions about things like broken bones, sprains, or serious burns.
“Are you well enough to walk?” Marco started to fuss over my injuries again, but seeing the hard look I gave him, he stepped back. We finished putting away the books in silence, and I hobbled to my room.
Before I headed to the clinic, I would need to change into civilian clothes. As I undressed, I laid my uniform out on my bed: gray mask, bulletproof vest, khaki pants, utility belt, combat boots, and black gloves, undershirt, and hooded tunic. Gazing down at my battered, bloody uniform, I briefly thought about what it would be like to never put it on again. I was blessed with powers and the chance to defend innocent people with them, and here I was, disobeying my leader and daydreaming about abandoning my team. Loyalty, I reminded myself.
I pulled on a pair of worn jeans and comforted myself by putting on a pretty blouse speckled with blue flowers, the latter with some difficulty because of my sprain. After gently unwinding my regulation waist-length hair from its messy bun, I sat on the edge of my bed and brushed it.
I caught a glimpse of myself in a windowpane. Bruises and cuts crisscrossed my thin, pale face like splattered paint, though they couldn’t distract from an obvious black eye, a leftover from a fight a few days prior. My thick hair was such a dark brown it was almost black, and it was matted with dirt, blood, and who knew what else. It was painfully clear that I wasn’t pretty on the outside and, as Patrick was fond of reminding me, I was too obstinate and impulsive to be pretty on the inside.
After braiding my hair tightly in two sections, I scrubbed my face and put on foundation over the black eye, which didn’t really conceal it. I topped off my disguise with thick-framed glasses that slightly obscured my dark brown eyes. I to
ok a moment to gaze at my reflection, and all I could see was an unfortunate young woman, as forgettable as she was powerless.
Before I left base camp, I signed out in our log, writing my name, the date, time, location I was going to, and how long I expected to be gone. With any luck, my outing would be unremarkable.
3
The downpour mirrored my mood while I walked towards the clinic. I mentally dared every hypothetical mugger and rapist to try me, but I walked down the street in miserable safety. I kicked a soda can into the gutter.
I’d said I’d be gone for an hour. The clock was ticking.
When I arrived at the double doors with the large red cross on them, I only paused for a second before continuing on my way down the street. I didn’t know where I was going. I passed the park where I’d once stopped a shooting, the office building where I’d chased a man who could chew metal and spit it out like bullets (three people died that day), and the road that led to the bridge where just six months ago I first met Patrick, Ember, and Reid. An ice storm had encased the city—Marco and I had been dispatched to help the other three, and our team had finally become complete.
Soaked to the skin and shivering uncontrollably, I turned down Davis Street, a fancy neighborhood filled with boutiques, specialty bookstores, and ritzy little restaurants that catered to the city’s wealthiest.
As I approached a coffee shop called Café Stella, a customer opened the door with a jingle, and the swirling aromas of coffee and spices enticed me to enter. My hand met the door handle.
There was no way to justify this act of rebellion. What if a teammate saw me? But the café looked so warm and cozy, I decided to step in. Just for a minute or two. Patrick couldn’t punish me too harshly for just wanting to step out of the rain.
The café was almost empty. The glass counter off to the side held rows of glistening pastries filled with chocolate and jams. Two glass jars on top of the counter were labeled “biscotti” and “amaretti.” Other jars showed off types of cookies for which I had no name. Behind the counter hung a chalkboard listing the café’s offerings. With a stab of embarrassment, I realized I didn’t know most of the words. What the heck was a macchiato?
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