Playing For Keeps

by Mur Lafferty

  PRAISE FOR

  “There’s something wonderfully Tick-like about Lafferty’s print debut, a gonzo imagination combined with a tight sense of plotting and good characterization. A quirky, funny page-turner that isn’t afraid to give superhero stories a deserved whomp upside the head.”

  —Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and co-editor of Boing Boing

  “Playing for Keeps is like Watchmen mashed together with Cheers. Against a backdrop of high stakes superhero battles, the real drama takes place at Keepsie’s Bar, where a group of misfit mutants band together to survive in a world where giant radioactive women are a dominant feature of the skyline.”

  —James Maxey, author of Nobody Gets the Girl

  “If you think you know how a superhero novel is supposed to read, then you'll find Playing For Keeps a revelation. Part satire, part thrill ride, this saga of a ragtag band of superheroes with a most unlikely assortment of abilities starts at a gallop and then accelerates. Now the world knows Mur Lafferty’s superpower: she can astonish us!”

  —James Patrick Kelly, Hugo and Nebula AwardWinning Author

  Published by Restless Brain Media

  Published on Smashwords by Mur Lafferty

  Copyright © 2011 Mur Lafferty

  Playing For Keeps by Mur Lafferty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

  Cover art by Christian Dovel. Copy edited by Leah Clarke.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  Please visit us on the web www.restlessbrainmedia.com

  CONTENTS

  Playing For Keeps

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  Nobody Gets The Girl Excerpt

  1

  The supervillain attacked at the most inconvenient place and time: right on Keepsie’s walk to work. She looked into the sky at the costumed combatants and groaned.

  “Why did they have to do this on a Thursday?”

  Crowds gathered on the sidewalk to stare up at the battle, clearly ignorant of the danger. Not to mention ignorant that they were making her late.

  “Oh my God, it’s White Lightning!” screamed a woman directly in Keepsie’s way, pointing at the sky.

  Despite herself, Keepsie looked up. She’d heard of the Academy’s newest hero, but hadn’t seen him yet.

  The sinister laugh of some villain and the deep voice of the hero rang out above the excited crowd. A loud crunch of breaking glass and bending metal sounded above them as someone was thrown through a building. Keepsie guiltily hoped it was one of those damn holier-than-thou superheroes from the Academy hitting a skyscraper.

  She held up her hand to block the sun. “Another building to repair.”

  Another crunch, and several people screamed. Keepsie stumbled as people slammed into her, desperate to get out of the way.

  Keepsie had been watching to see if the hero would get out of the building. She grunted in alarm when a massive object ran into her. Her breath whooshed out and instead of falling underneath whatever had hit her; she was airborne, wedged painfully in a strong grip. She winced when she realized she was now five feet from one of the more prominent supervillains.

  Up close, her abductor’s commanding presence was even more frightening than on television; he was seven feet tall, bald, and handsome in a Harley Davidson riding kind of way. He had a monocle implanted where his right eye should have been, and circuitry glowed under the skin around his neck and jaw line. She had seen pictures, but had never seen him up close: Doodad, Master of Machines. Although he looked as if he could punch out an elephant, she had never heard of Doodad participating in a physical fight. His power was in his brain, and his skill to bend machines to his will.

  Doodad’s flying crab machine had plucked Keepsie painfully from the sidewalk. When the news had shown pictures of the machine, Keepsie had giggled, reminded of the Jetsons’ little hover car. Now, flying above Seventh City wedged in its one claw, it didn’t seem so cute. Although the claw pinched her bruised ribs, she clung to it and forced herself not to look down. It wasn’t as if she could fly.

  On the whole, the villains didn’t scare Keepsie, but heights terrified her. Doodad wouldn’t drop her; he wasn’t into blind terrorist acts like dropping innocents to watch them splatter. He always had a reason for his actions unlike some of the more homicidal villains like Seismic Stan. The wind pulled tears from her eyes and she gulped. At least, he’d always had reasons for his actions in the past.

  Keepsie screwed her eyes shut as they gained altitude. Where the hell were the heroes that he’d been fighting? Her stomach turned at the unfamiliar wish for a hero. Or maybe that was the altitude.

  Almost as an answer to her question, a booming voice said, “Put her down!”

  And then he came; his glorious blonde hair perfectly styled and unruffled by the wind. He had apparently had time to restyle after freeing himself from the building Doodad had thrown him into. The hero filled out a black leotard and tights, his costume completed with a black cape with white lightning bolts covering it. A black mask covered his eyes, but allowed his blonde hair and chiseled jaw to show in true superhero glory. This must be the rookie, White Lightning. He flew, tall and proud, over the rooftops, straight for Keepsie and Doodad.

  Keepsie gritted her teeth. Be careful what you wish for. Why did it have to be the rookie? She could have stomached being rescued by the veteran heroine, Pallas.

  “Let her go, Doodad! You’ll get nothing this way!” White Lightning said, his booming voice hurting Keepsie’s ears.

  “Tell them at the Academy, tell her, that if you want to see this woman alive, you’ll send me Timson by midnight!” Doodad shouted back.

  Midnight? Who would open the bar?

  “You’d never drop her, you have too much to lose!” shouted the newcomer. He hovered about thirty feet from the flying crab machine. Keepsie’s feet kicked in the breeze and she was thankful she’d worn boots today.

  “Lose? What do I have to lose? Family? Job? People that I love? I had none of those to begin with,” Doodad said.

  The hero scowled at him, and something caught Keepsie’s eye over the skyline. A news helicopter buzzed toward them, camera pointing right at Keepsie and her captor.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “We don’t negotiate with villains!” White Lightning said.

  Good. Go for the textbook response. That’ll convince him. This guy was an idiot. Was every other hero busy at the moment?

  As the shouting match continued, a low whirring sound caught Keepsie’s attention. The claw gripped her somewhat tighter, and she squirmed.

  The hero raised his hands to the cloudless October sky and Keepsie realized too late what was about to happen. The lightning bolt snaked down and slammed into the machine, filling Keepsie’s nostrils with ozone and her eyes with blinding light. The deafening crack came a millisecond later and Doodad’s machine faltered in midair.

  The rubber-padded claw squeezed tighter and tighter, causing Keepsie to cry out in pain and struggle against it, despite their altitude. Then it opened.

  She fell.

  2

  Keepsie had always hoped that she would be heroic in a situation such as this, but her hopes that she would at least act dignified died when she screamed and didn’t stop. She screwed her eyes shut as her stomach dropped away from her. In the abject terror that flooded her body, she still wondered in a moment of clarity whether her will was in order.

  She stopped falling with a jolt, and a loud cheer rose from the street. Shamefully she clutch
ed the hero’s heavily muscled arms, but her fingers slipped over the spandex. They flew higher, to Keepsie’s dismay, and circled the Jameson building, the tallest building in the city.

  “Please let me down,” she said, but the wind whisked her words away.

  White Lightning waved at the news helicopter. Keepsie hoped it wouldn’t see her. She clutched the hero’s one arm and shuddered. Her mouth filled with nauseated bile. She hadn’t been this close to a hero since she’d applied at the Academy ten years ago. She had never been in a damsel-in-distress situation before. She didn’t think she liked it.

  The hero turned toward the street and they finally started their descent.

  This couldn’t be over fast enough. He finally deposited her lightly on the sidewalk, and she looked up at her disgustingly glorious savior.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say.

  A frown creased his blemish-free forehead. “Are you all right, Miss? Did he hurt you?”

  She shook her head and brushed her messy brown hair from her face. “I’m fine. You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “White Lightning, Seventh City’s newest hero.” He smiled widely, reminding Keepsie of the high school quarterback who tried to get her into the backseat of his car.

  “Flight and lightning control. Neat. No wonder they’re happy to have you,” she said.

  He beamed. “I would like to hope so.”

  An awkward pause hung in the air between them, Keepsie realizing too late that he was hoping for another thanks. The crowd pushed closer, eager to touch his cape, get a picture, anything.

  “Well, thanks again, and—”

  “You’re welcome, ma’am,” he said, speaking loudly for the benefit of the crowd. “Incidentally,” he added, “what’s your name?”

  “Keepsie.”

  “That’s an interesting name. Is it Indian?”

  Keepsie fought the desire to look pointedly at her very white skin. “Uh, no, it was a nickname given to me when I got my power when I was fourteen. I’m Third Wave.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Third Wave pseudonyms. Hero names are illegal, ma’am. Only registered heroes may have them,” he whispered, and leaped into the air, flying toward Doodad’s retreating vehicle, which was floundering through the sky and belching black smoke.

  People cheered and waved at White Lightning, some women screaming that they loved him. Keepsie’s adrenaline left her. She was cold with shame and anger. The news crew would be here soon; she pushed her way through the crowd and actually snarled when a starry-eyed woman asked her what White Lightning was really like.

  The short walk to the bar failed to calm her down. “‘Hero names are illegal,’” she said, imitating White Lightning’s deep voice. “Fuck you.” Her voice sounded muffled to her own ears. She hoped the hero hadn’t damaged her hearing.

  Keepsie thrust her hands into her jacket pockets and sped up, hoping her deliveryman would wait on her. Her breath caught in her throat when her hand closed around an unfamiliar object.

  It was a heavy metal sphere, about the size of a golf ball. Realizing that Doodad had slipped it into her pocket, she stuffed it back. She’d examine it later.

  Her legs still shook with reaction as she approached the delivery truck waiting outside the stairs to her basement bar. Carl stood at the bottom of the stairs and peered through the window.

  “Sorry I’m late, Carl,” Keepsie called down to him.

  He looked up and waved at her. “Oh don’t worry nothing about it, I just got here myself ’cause traffic wasn’t moving hardly at all,” He climbed the stairs. “I think it was another one of those hero battles slowed things down.” He handed her the clipboard and slid the door up on his truck.

  “Yeah, I know. I got caught up in it myself. I had to get…” she made herself say the word, “rescued.” She scanned the purchase order and didn’t look at Carl.

  “You shitting me?” Carl said, wheeling his loaded hand truck to the stairs. “You OK?”

  “Of course,” she said, sniffing. “The city’s newest egotistical hero, White Lightning, personally rescued me from certain death and insulted me in the process.” She slid past him on the stairs and opened the unlocked door.

  Carl stopped the hand truck midway down the steps to stare at her. “Did you say ‘White Lightning’?”

  She grinned up at him. “Yep. He flew away so fast I didn’t have a chance to tell him he named himself after mountain corn squeezins.”

  Keepsie went inside and turned on the lights, Carl’s laughter still booming on the stairs.

  * * * * *

  Unlike most bars, which depended on a Saturday rush, Thursday’s were Keepsie’s busiest night of the week. Her bar was popular with the locals; although it didn’t have the usual hero memorabilia covering the walls like a lot of Seventh City’s bars did, it did have the best bar food in the city. It was also the cleanest, with the best service in town. These made it a hopping place of business normally, but tonight was special. It was Third Wave Thursday.

  Keepsie didn’t put up any banners and she didn’t have any specials, but it was an unspoken truth that the third generation of people with strange superhuman powers, named the Third Wave, gathered to drink together on Thursday. It was their night of solidarity.

  Her staff had closed the bar in perfect condition, as always, the night before. The various little victories Third Wave citizens could claim were precious, and she appreciated each of her staff’s talents. Keepsie’s talent was not one that she could get paid for, which had always bugged her, but she was happy to hire a chef with supercooking ability and a waitress with the inability to drop a bar tray.

  She had little to do to open except check Carl’s delivery and sign his invoice. She readied the kitchen for the chef and then checked the clock: good. Michelle, her assistant manager and closest friend, wouldn’t be there for another five minutes at least, and the rest of the staff wouldn’t get there for fifteen minutes after that.

  She didn’t relish telling Michelle about the afternoon.

  She sat at the bar and pulled the ball out of her pocket. It was made of a dull metal and was seamless, like a large ball bearing. She rolled it around in her hands, listening for any noises inside. She heard nothing.

  Why had Doodad dropped an oversized BB into her pocket?

  The front door opened and Michelle walked in. Effortlessly beautiful as always, Michelle exuded the passion of her Jamaican father and the temper of her Irish mother.

  “Hey lady, did you hear the news?” Michelle said, her dark eyes shining with excitement. She brushed past Keepsie and hung her coat and purse on a hook behind the bar.

  Talking to Carl about the attack had been easy; he wasn’t her friend, someone she saw daily, someone who knew the same people she did. He also wasn’t someone who saw the villains as rock stars. Michelle’s interest bordered on illegal, but a bill that Third Wavers had called the “Hero Worship Bill,” which would make villain sympathizing a crime, had yet to get out of committee.

  Keepsie bit her lip and slipped the ball into her pocket. She followed Michelle into the kitchen.

  “I didn’t hear the news,” Keepsie said truthfully. “But—”

  “Doodad fought this new hero guy, even grabbed a hostage!” Michelle could hardly contain her glee. “Then the hero rescued her and made Doodad crash.”

  “Do you think Doodad’s hurt?” Keepsie said, knowing which part of the story Michelle wanted to focus on.

  “There’s no word yet, but they took him away in an Academy ambulance, so I think he’s still alive. They usually take them away in a regular ambulance if they’re dead.”

  The villain Seismic Stan had died five years before in a battle with Pallas, the city’s oldest hero. But Keepsie didn’t remember an ambulance.

  “Guess you didn’t get my message?” Michelle asked.

  “No, what was it?”

  “I left it on your cell’s voice mail, telling you to take another way into work because the news was all
about the reindeer games going on with Doodad,” she said, tying an apron around her waist. “You must have been on the phone.”

  Keepsie gritted her teeth. “No, my cell phone just sucks. Thanks, though. Listen, I—”

  “So did you see any action?”

  “Yes, actually, Doodad—”

  “Oh man, you saw him?”

  “Michelle!”

  Her friend finally stopped talking. Michelle was not someone who was offended when you told her to lower her voice or stop interrupting. She smiled expectantly.

  Keepsie suddenly found it difficult to talk. “I was the hostage.”

  “Holy shit! Are you OK?”

  Keepsie busied herself with stocking the already stocked pint glass tray. “Yeah. I mean, I got the shit scared out of me, I was nearly electrocuted, the hero humiliated me, I think my hearing is damaged and I may have cracked a rib.” She lifted her shirt to view the blossoming bruises on her torso. “The good news is that Carl got caught in traffic too, so I wasn’t too late to meet him.”

  “Jesus. Why you?”

  Keepsie lowered her shirt and sighed. “He planted something on me. I don’t know what it is.” She pulled the ball out of her pocket and showed it to Michelle.

  “Why would he—oh,” Michelle said, her eyes growing wide. “He wants you to keep it.”

  Keepsie nodded. “My thought too. But who does he want me to keep it from? And does he really think I’ll give it back to him after this afternoon?”

  “I guess he does,” Michelle said thoughtfully. “He’s hot, but he’s also smart. He probably wants it back at some point. And he probably thinks he can get it.”

  “Well, he’s in the Academy jails now, so he’s not coming for it any time soon. That’s a relief.”