by James Maxey
Niko leaned over the typewriter. Even though there was no paper in it, she pressed a key. Tap. Then a few more. Tap, tap.
“Do you have any idea who I used to be?” Her voice was very quiet.
“Not a clue.”
“Eric knows,” she said, not looking up from the typewriter. I couldn’t tell if it was a question.
“Who you used to be?”
“About the Butterfly House.”
“According to Val and Harry, yeah. I’m sure all the old guard team knows. Tempo, Golden Victory, She-Devil, Arc and Retaliator all knew. They were the founders. I don’t know about the next wave heroes, Lt. Laser, Anyman, or the second Blue Bee. Harry thinks they were kept in the dark.”
Tap. Tap. Tap. She shivered, nodding slowly.
Her eyes were wet as she looked up. “So Retaliator knew my memories were false.”
“Probably.”
“He knew, as he helped me find the Prime Mover, that I was seeking vengeance for parents who hadn’t really died, and a crime that had never actually been committed. I mean, Prime Mover never did confess he’d had my parents kidnapped. Said he’d never even heard of the project they’d been working on. I didn’t believe him. He’s one of the bad guys. Of course he’d lie.”
“At least you helped put him back in prison,” I said. “For a little while, at least. I hear he’s back out.”
“Yes,” she said. “And Retaliator won’t stop reminding me that the Prime Mover’s out there. It’s like, anytime I want to talk about anything that might make him even slightly uncomfortable, he changes the subject to the Prime Mover, and I just lose focus and do whatever he needs me to do to help him figure out the latest evil master plan.”
She looked up from the typewriter. “Our relationship… it isn’t very healthy. I sometimes wonder why I’m so in love with someone so much older, so manipulative, and so remote. And part of me always goes back to the fact that I’m a freak of nature, that I’m lucky any man will still touch me, that Eric is more than I deserve. But… what if…?”
“Oh God,” I said, suddenly grasping what she was trying to say.
Niko wiped tears from her cheeks as the yet unspoken question caught in her throat.
I sat on the couch beside her and took her hand. It was cool and spongy. Do you remember Stretch Armstrong dolls? She kind of smelled like that as well as I wrapped my arm across her shoulder.
She whispered, “Was I brainwashed to love him?”
I hugged her tightly. “I promise we’ll find out.”
Chapter Five
No Reason to Panic
Echo’s story
Ifollowed Anyman as he ran toward the hanger where the spaceship was kept. This was my first day on the team so I was completely turned around in the labyrinthine halls of Sea Base Seven. I sort of remembered seeing the spaceship during my orientation, but, you know, I saw about five thousand things I couldn’t understand during that brief tour, so it’s understandable why I’d get turned around.
“May I assume this is your first mission into space?” Anyman asked, breathing hard. He was still in his normal identity, a middle-aged Asian guy not in the best of shape.
“Yeah,” I said. He started coughing. I asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he gasped, before coughing some more. He stopped, pausing to rest with one hand against the wall to steady himself. “I really need to get into shape.”
“Can’t you, like, change into Golden Victory?” I asked. “Couldn’t hurt to have a second one of him.”
“I’m terrible at being Golden Victory,” he said, still panting. “I keep my brain when I take on other people’s bodies. I don’t have the lifetime of practice I need to really control Golden Victory’s strength. The few times I tried it I kept walking through walls by accident and breaking everything I touched. I turned into him once to catch a falling airplane and wound up snapping the plane in two. Luckily, the tail end crashed into water and everyone survived, and I got the front end on the ground safely. Still, it’s a miracle I’ve never killed anyone.”
“That sucks,” I said.
“I still use his form if I’m going into a situation where I just need his invulnerability, but even standing around and not doing stuff in his body requires concentration. He’s got powers he doesn’t even advertise. Did you know he’s a shapeshifter?”
“Seriously?”
Anyman nodded. “Yeah, I used his body once to diffuse a hostage situation since he was the only guy the gunman said he would trust, and while I was face to face with the guy, watching his eyes, looking for clues about his mental state, my face started shifting until I looked like him. He freaked out, started shooting, though luckily he aimed at me instead of the hostage. I completely mangled his hand tearing the gun away from him.” He finally seemed to have caught his breath and straightened up, looking around. He looked confused.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“I think we took a wrong turn. Maybe we should have taken a left back at the cafeteria?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “You’ve been in the Legion for, what, ten years? You don’t know your way around?”
“My wife gives me grief about my terrible sense of direction. It’s not like I hang out at the Sea Base between missions. I’ve got a life, you know?”
“Must be nice,” I said.
“Do you mind if I change back to Tempo? Or will it make you uncomfortable to see him again? I’ve been told he was your grandfather.”
I shrugged. “I’m good.”
He tapped a few buttons on his oversized calculator watch. His form shimmered, disappearing in a cloud of sparkles, reforming as Tempo, only with an “A” on his chest instead of a “T.”
“Wait here,” he said. I blinked and he was standing about three feet away from where he’d just been. He said, “Found it. This way, Doppelganger.”
“It’s so weird to have people call me that,” I said.
“I don’t want to be presumptuous and call you Valentine.”
“I don’t mind. Only, it’s just Val.”
“Great,” he said. “I’m Harper.”
“That’s an unusual name.”
“I was born in 1960,” he said. “My family had just moved to the US from China. Our family name was Li. To Kill a Mockingbird was a bestseller that year. My mother liked the name.”
“So you’re Harper Li?”
He nodded. “Any joke you’re thinking about making, I can assure you I’ve heard it.”
“I’m not going to make fun of anyone’s name. Do you know how many times I’ve been asked how it feels to have a holiday named after me?”
He smiled and said, “Everyone’s waiting for us. Do you mind if I carry you?”
“I guess not.” Blink. Suddenly, I was in his arms and we were in a large hanger in front of a giant flying saucer. I looked over the saucer as Anyman put me down. Harry was right, it looked really retro, like it had come straight out of a 1950’s b-movie. I didn’t see Golden Victory, but recognized the two people who were standing by the gangplank leading up into the saucer. The tall, lanky guy was Arc. He was one of the founding five, an old guard superhero who’d been fighting crime longer than I’d been alive. He looked the part, too. A lot of the new wave superheroes like myself have costumes that are all leather, plastic, or spandex and tend toward dark shades. Arc was dressed in a uniform that looked woven from canvas, in vivid flag-stripe red, with golden lightning bolts decorating his chest. He wore dark goggles which did little to mask the fact his eyes glowed like arc lamps. He was mostly bald save for a stripe of white hair around the back of his scalp. He had to be in his late sixties, if not his seventies, but he still looked really fit and trim.
“Welcome to the team, Doppelganger,” he said, shaking my hand. “Have you met Prodigy?”
“Um,” I said, momentarily put off my guard, since I was pretty sure I had met her, but she wouldn’t know that. If you’ve read Valentine Summer’s book The Butterfly House, you know I only
got to know a handful of the residents kept there, but sometimes caught glimpses of others. Just before leaving, on my way from the library, I’d seen a black girl about my age being led by guards through a door down the hall. This brief glimpse would likely not have stayed in my mind except for one tiny detail. The girl had been missing her right arm, save for a stump only a few inches long below the shoulder, wrapped in what looked like fresh bandages.
The woman standing before me now was about my age and her right arm was a silvery robotic prosthetic, currently extended toward me, palm open, as if expecting to shake hands.
“Something wrong?” asked Prodigy, sounding as if she was potentially offended by the way I was staring at her arm.
“No, no,” I said, shaking her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m getting a little overwhelmed keeping track of everyone I have and haven’t met today. I mean, you know, I’ve seen most of you on the news. I never expected to be meeting so many of you in person.”
“I’ve seen quite a bit of you in the news as well,” she said, her eyes fixed on me with an expression best described as judgmental. “And I’m just as surprised to hear you’re part of the team as you are. Maybe more so.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “The sex tapes. Look, those were—”
“I don’t care about those,” said Prodigy, with a withering glare. “I take your word that the videos were recorded without your consent. I’m not going to blame the subject of revenge porn for being victimized. But, I do have to question your judgment in ever joining a vigilante gang of white supremacists in the first place.”
I winced. Maybe she thought I’d hesitated shaking her hand because she was black? She couldn’t be my only new teammate wondering how the hell I’d gotten onto the team. Honestly, I doubted she was as surprised as I was, since I’d never expected my gambit to work.
I wanted to explain myself. I was a clone of the first Valentine Summers who had never exploded. I’d left Valentine months ago and went off to have an independent life. Then, Valentine had published The Butterfly Cage, telling the truth about the Butterfly House. The very day the book was published, she’d been murdered. In the days that followed, Golden Victory had been all over television, telling the world that the Butterfly House was a myth. But the more he talked, the better the book sold, and you could almost see the frustration in his face as he fielded questions. Meanwhile, Harry had gone missing. I thought he might be dead, until he popped up in Manhattan, fighting a giant robot. He disappeared again, until news reports started coming out of Venezuela that he’d been spotted in that country by some weird cultists, then linked to the death of his mother, the supervillain Anastasia Moreau. It was obvious he was in trouble, and I worried that the Legion wanted him dead, since if he ever reappeared in public he could totally verify everything in The Butterfly Cage.
So I cut a deal. I contacted Harry’s old agent who had worked with him on licensing deals for his Sock Monkey dolls. She put me in touch with Golden Victory, and I pretended to be the real Valentine. I explained that it had been a clone that got murdered, and promised I’d renounce The Butterfly Cage if he’d lay off Harry. Golden Victory denied that he’d ever intended to harm Harry, but said he’d welcome me onto the team to lend extra weight to my denials. Getting onto the team hadn’t been my original plan, but once the door open I stepped through, not because I was eager to play superhero, but because I still think someone on this team is responsible for having the other Valentine killed. Once I figure out if it’s true, and can prove who gave the order, I really hope to put my days in costume behind me forever.
While I processed through my real reasons for being here, I completely failed to think of a good lie I could tell Prodigy, and the prolonged silence between us only grew more awkward. The accusation that I was overly friendly with white supremacists still lingered in the air like a rancid fart.
“I, uh, really have no excuse for that whole era of my life, beyond the fact I was young and dumb and kind of oblivious to stuff that seems obvious in retrospect,” I admitted. “But, I promise to work hard on this team to prove that I really do appreciate this second chance you’ve all given me.”
“Whatever,” said Prodigy. “Let’s get going. The sooner we wrap this up, the sooner I can get back to work on my dissertation.”
“You’re working on a Ph.D.?” I asked.
“My fifth,” she said.
Suddenly I found myself hating her. Tempo didn’t use his powers to win footraces. Golden Victory never used his great strength to win every medal in bodybuilding competitions. According to the roster briefing I’d been given earlier, Prodigy’s power was that she could learn anything after seeing or hearing it once. Racking up college degrees when you have a super-brain seemed like cheating.
I was spared from further awkward conversation when Arc came over. He grabbed my hand in a vigorous handshake and said, “Welcome to the team, Doppelganger! I’m Arc, but my friends call me Roy.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You can call me Val. I’m not even sure why I need a code name. The whole world knows who I am.”
“Hey, don’t buck tradition,” said Arc, smiling. “You know, the first Blue Bee and I were the ones who got the whole costumed mystery man thing going, right? If I went out in public in my normal clothes and my eyes started glowing, kids would run away screaming. Put on a bright uniform and little kids run up to you wanting your autograph.”
“I’ve never had anyone ask for my autograph,” said Prodigy.
“Well, you’re kind of new,” said Arc. “Give it time. Plus, I still think your costume needs, I don’t know, a big logo of a brain or something.”
Prodigy’s costume was pretty bland, dark blue body armor with silver zippers that matched her robotic arm, and she didn’t wear a mask. The new costume the Legion had issued me was muted red and yellow, with a red mask that covered my eyes, Lone Ranger style. I’d felt like a clown when I first put in on, but Arc’s talk made me appreciate it more.
Anyman looked down at his watch. “I know I always feel impatient when I’m in Tempo’s body because my sense of time is so different, but where the hell is Golden Victory? We should be halfway to the moon by now.”
“I just got back from orbit,” said Golden Victory, swooshing into the hangar. “I didn’t have time to fix all the satellites that got knocked out of whack, but Prodigy worked out how much of a nudge I’d need to give to the main communication satellite CNN uses to bring it back online.”
“Don’t we have bigger things to worry about than whether people are getting some cable channel?” I asked.
“Sterngeist gave us twelve hours,” said Golden Victory. “Plenty of time for us to fix this, but also plenty of time for people to panic. We need to let them know everything’s going to be okay.” He looked at Prodigy. “Ready?”
She nodded and held her robotic arm toward him, palm lifted up. The silver in the center of her palm clicked and clacked as it reconfigured itself, revealing a camera lens. She said, “You’re live in three… two… one.”
Golden Victory drew back his shoulders, looking directly at the camera. His face was grave as he said, in his deep, authoritative voice, “My fellow citizens, by now you’ve no doubt heard of Sterngeist’s threat. While we take his claim that he can steal the moon seriously, please be assured that there is no reason for panic. The Lawful Legion has assembled a team of its brightest, bravest members to meet this threat head on. We’ve beaten Sterngeist before and have every confidence that we shall do so again. While we take the fight to Sterngeist, it’s important that you do your part. Cooperate with local authorities as they issue directives on how best to prepare for any impending dangers. While our attention is focused on aliens, we’ll be relying on you, our fellow citizens, to maintain law and order, to care for those who might be harmed by the disruption in communications, and to offer aid and comfort to those who might be frightened or worried. The danger we face is grave, but the courage and will you show in the face of these dangers is an eve
n greater force, and an inspiration to me personally as I head for the moon. Your fight is our fight! If we all pull together, victory is certain!” His face broke into a broad smile, and he gave the camera a quick salute. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to save the moon!”
Chapter Six
Fourth Horseman
Harry’s Story
Retaliator called out, “Follow me!” and, even though I was dead on my feet, I followed. He’s really good at giving commands. And, you know, I get it. You can’t just ignore the freakin’ Fourth Horseman if he’s decided to grab some nukes. Whenever he shows up, you’ve got, like, maybe an hour to stop the apocalypse, making Sterngeist and his twelve hour deadline look like a model of generosity. The clock was ticking, but, man, I didn’t have the time or energy for this. I still didn’t know what was going on with Jenny. Getting on the phone to check in with her somehow felt more urgent than saving the world.
Retaliator came to a halt in the tachyon bay. The tachyon bay is one of my favorite spots on the base, since it looks like it was lifted straight out of a science fiction movie, with gleaming metal walls and an insane number of dials and monitors and gauges surrounding the gates. From here, tachyon tubes radiated through hyperspace to matching gates in major cities all around the world. Retaliator went to a terminal and started tapping keys.
I went up to him and said, “Look, I know we’re in a hurry, but do you think I have time—”
I didn’t finish my sentence. Retaliator wears a black leather bondage mask that hides his whole face except for his eyes showing through two zipper holes. He also has a mouth zipper, but he hardly ever opens it, not that he needs to. He can convey a lot through his eyes, more than most people manage with a whole face. What his eyes said now was “shut up,” so I shut up.
The Vegas gate flashed. John Niache, Atomahawk, zoomed out of the gate, instantly raising the temperature about fifty degrees as the wash of superheated air he used to propel himself swept the room. He landed in a crouch, eyeing me warily.