by James Maxey
I stopped in my tracks. “Uh, Brain Boy was, like, three years old. And white. And, you know. A boy.”
“Ah,” said Prodigy, her face still immobile, her eyes gazing off in the distance. “I see how my appearance might confuse you.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” my clone asked, sounding angry. “Because it’s not funny. Brain Boy died because I was dumb enough to take off his helmet. I got to watch him have a stroke right in front of my eyes, and had to listen as Chopper gave him CPR for the better part of an hour trying to save him. I still have fucking nightmares. I know you think I’m an idiot, and I know you’re probably having fun playing your little mind games, but I swear to God if you keep this up I will knock your fucking teeth out.”
“Calm down,” I said, putting my arm around my clone. “She’s just being a jerk. Don’t let her get under your skin.”
“I swear I’m telling the truth,” said Prodigy. “I’ve never wanted anything but the best for you, Valentine. You’ve always had a special place in my heart.”
“That does it!” My clone tore from my grasp and went at Prodigy with clenched fists. But ape-fu turned out to be a poor match for Prodigy’s martial arts prowess. It took Prodigy maybe half a second to slam my clone to the floor so hard it left her unconscious.
Prodigy still didn’t show any emotion, or move her lips at all as she said, “I was only defending myself. I never intended to hurt her.”
“Well, you did,” I said. “I’m not dumb enough to take a punch at you. But, you know what? I’m going to tell you something. Something that’s going to take the wind right out of you.”
“What?” Prodigy asked.
“The Butterfly House? It’s real. I was there. And so, my dear, were you. You think you’ve got some kind of super-brain? Bullshit. You can’t even remember the truth of who you really are. What good is your superhuman memory if it can be completely overwritten with lies?”
“But I do remember the Butterfly House,” said Prodigy. “I remember everything! I remember you, and John, and Harry, and all the time we spent together.”
“Yeah, nice bluff, but I also have a memory, and even though I saw you once in the hallway, you were never part of the therapy sessions with me.”
“You don’t understand,” said Prodigy. “I know that the female form you’re looking at wasn’t present. But I was there. You didn’t kill me on the roof by taking off my helmet. You freed me. I’m so sorry you’ve carried that guilt all these years.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Seriously. Just shut up. I can’t even begin to guess why you think this is funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny, Valentine,” said Prodigy, raising her robotic hand next to her face. “I’m not lying. I’m Brain Boy.”
A gear turned in my head. Something clicked.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, as I realized where the voice was coming from, and that it really wasn’t a young woman’s voice, but the voice of a young child.
My clone groaned as she woke up, rolling over on her back, her arm draped across her eyes. “I don’t know about the rest of humanity, but I think I just evolved beyond aggression and violence. At least evolved enough not to try to hit you again, Prodigy.”
“Brain Boy,” I corrected.
“What the fuck?” my clone asked, moving her arm aside to glare at me. “Now you’re doing it? Why is this possibly funny?”
“Talk to the hand,” I said.
Chapter Thirteen
Chem Queen
Jenny’s Story
The hospital was hauntingly quiet. My footsteps sounded loud, and all the little squeaky balloon noises Nimble made with her rubber feet on the tile floor had to be alerting anyone in the area that we were coming. But, as luck would have it, it wasn’t just the guards that were mechanized. We didn’t pass a single human, no nurses or doctors or cleaning staff. A robotic vacuum cleaner whirred down the hall before us, oblivious to our presence.
Nimble’s stomach buzzed. She reached her hand into her belly button and pulled out her phone. “I don’t really need my stomach for food anymore,” she explained, noticing the curious look I gave her. “It makes a handy purse.” Nimble glanced down at her phone, which was still vibrating with an alert. She laughed. “That’s a lucky break.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“The team’s computer is dishing out assignments based on proximity and availability. I just got summoned to investigate a break in at a secret DAI hospital in Alexandria.”
“They don’t know it’s us that broke in?”
“Maybe not. But Retaliator will figure it out once he’s not preoccupied with stopping the apocalypse. He’s like Sherlock Holmes in a gimp mask.”
“What is up with that whole bondage vibe of his, anyway?” I asked.
“If I told you, he’d kill me.”
“Can you be killed?” I asked. “I’ve never really seen you get hurt.”
“I meant it more metaphorically,” said Nimble. “But, screw it. If he really has been keeping my past at the Butterfly House a secret from me, I certainly don’t have any reason to respect his secrets. Eric Gray’s his real name. He’s the son of Reinhart Gray. You might have heard of him?”
“Not really,” I said. Then a lightbulb clicked. “Wait. Was he the Supreme Court justice who committed suicide thirty years ago?”
“Yeah, but some of the details were suppressed by the authorities. When his butler found him, Reinhart was dressed in bondage gear and hanging from a leather strap. The coroner ruled his death an auto-erotic asphyxiation; basically, he’d accidently killed himself by choking himself. Apparently, some people get off on that kind of stuff. Eric—Retaliator—never accepted that story. He’s certain his father was killed. His father had started his career as a prosecutor breaking up the mob. He had more enemies than you can count. Eric became a vigilante to find the man who murdered his father. He wears the exact same gimp mask his father was found in so that, when he one day confronts the guilty party, it will be like his father’s ghost is having his vengeance.”
“So he’s never found the killer?”
“If there is a killer,” said Nimble. “I mean… Eric’s really, really good at solving crimes. There’s a reason demigods like Golden Victory and She-Devil treat a guy with no powers as an equal. The fact he’s never solved the mystery makes me think there’s no mystery to be solved, though I don’t think he’ll ever admit that.”
“He doesn’t have powers?”
“What powers did you think he had?”
“I’ve never been brave enough to ask,” I admitted. “But I was pretty sure he could turn invisible. He’s always sneaking up behind people without them noticing.”
“He spends, like, ten thousand dollars on each pair of his boots,” said Nimble. “The soles are made of some crazy metamaterial that makes his footsteps completely silent.” As she spoke, she pressed keys on her onscreen keyboard. “I’ve responded that I’ll check out the break in at the hospital, so no one else should be on their way. Let’s go talk to Chem Queen.” She cocked her head. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” I asked.
“Sort of a –”
“—faint rumble,” I said, hearing it now. Only, after a few seconds, it really wasn’t all that faint. The floor trembled, then shook so hard it was tricky to stand.
“Maybe one of the big guns like Golden Victory is tunneling in?” I said, as the vibrations turned into a full blown earthquake. From down the hall, there was a loud crash.
“Golden Victory’s in space,” said Nimble, darting out into the hall. The vibrations suddenly stopped. “But you might be right about the tunneling. The vibration reminds me a lot of—”
“The Spectacular Spelunker!” a man yelled from Betty’s room just before stepping into the hall. He was dressed in an orange jump suit, wearing a metal helmet with a headlamp, and aiming what looked like the nozzle of a firehose fitted with a pistol grip at us. “My stalactite gun will make short work
of you!” he cried.
I leapt back into a side hall as he opened fire with a stream of white goop. It was a disturbing visual, and an even worse sound, like a dozen cats vomiting all at once. The blast of liquid calcite couldn’t hurt Nimble, but it did knock her back into the wall at the end of the hall, where she was buried in a pile of instantly hardening stone. As the stream of calcifying fluid sputtered out, I popped back into the hall, pistol drawn, and let off a shot at where the Spelunker had been standing. My bullet passed through empty air. Apparently, he’d gone back into Chem Queen’s room.
I ran back to where Nimble had been entombed by the limestone, which gleamed like fresh snow under the florescent lights. The hardened stone smelled like fresh poured concrete, and gave off heat like a furnace. Nimble’s face was completely covered. Did she need to breathe? Whatever the case, I knew for certain that bullets couldn’t hurt her. I shot a couple of holes in the rock covering what I thought was her torso. Something pink oozed out. I had a sinking feeling that it was blood, but as it kept flowing I realized it was her skin flowing through the holes I’d just punched. She seeped out into a puddle then rose, taking on human form once again, completely naked. I was surprised to find out she had no nipples. Apparently, the tape she normally wore over her chest didn’t actually have anything to conceal.
“Maybe we weren’t the break-in that triggered the alarm,” said Nimble, punching the stone with a mallet shaped fist and recovering her costume, goggles, and phone. Two seconds later, she was suited up again. “The Spelunker is Chem Queen’s boyfriend. He must be here to break her out while he thinks all the Legion is tied up with this moon thing.”
“You ever fight him before?” I asked, as more loud crashes and rumbles came from Chem Queen’s room.
“Nope. Last I heard, Mr. Unknown reported that the Spelunker had accidently petrified himself while tunneling into Fort Knox. Unfortunately, bad guys are even worse at staying dead than the good guys. We should be able to make short work of him. I mean, his only gimmick is his gun and his mole-dozer.”
“I thought he had some sort of minions?” I said.
“Oh, right. The cavemen,” said Nimble, rolling her eyes. “I mean, I know I’m a human rubber band, but Christ, sometimes the people we fight are hard to take seriously.”
As if to prove her point, four huge hairy men dressed in leopard loincloths wielding giant wooden clubs came charging down the hall at us, screaming incoherently. This would have been an excellent time for Nimble to stretch out and trip them up, but instead she doubled over laughing. “Oh God!” she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes.
She had the luxury of finding the humor in the situation, since clubs were going to bounce off her. I, on the other hand, wasn’t club proof, and I also didn’t want to shoot these guys, since, from what I remembered, most of them were kidnapped body builders enslaved by some sort of mind control fungus that grew in caverns.
I shoved the pistol back into my belt and charged at the onrushing cavemen, ducking as the first one swung his club, grabbing his arm and throwing him to his back, then spinning to catch the next one with a good solid kick to the gut. As he fell, I grabbed his club from the air and tried to clobber the third caveman, but he parried my blow with his own club, and I lost my grip. The clubs must have weighed fifty pounds and this brute was easily a foot taller than me.
I tried to duck past him, planning to kick him to his knees with a blow from behind, but the last cavemen clipped me with his club, knocking me to the floor. I rolled to my back as he raised his weapon. I know I’d started the evening planning to kill myself, but if I got my brains bashed out by a drug-addled muscleman wearing a fur loincloth I’d die of embarrassment. I rolled away from the blow and his club knocked a crater in the white tile floor.
Adrenaline surging, I clenched my fists and shouted, “Leave me alone, you limp dick motherfucker!”
I cringed as the words left my lips, ashamed that my vow not to use my powers hadn’t lasted even a full night. Tendrils of smoke wisped around the caveman’s face, then POOF! His beard erupted into flames. He dropped his club and started slapping his face, shrieking in terror. I kicked him in the nuts, pushing him back, then grabbed his club and took out his friend before he even realized what was going on, cracking the club over his head so hard I again lost my grip. About this time the sprinklers kicked in. Burnt-beard looked at me with murder in his eyes as the flames flickered out. He growled as he charged, hands outstretched, looking ready to throttle me.
He wasn’t devoting brain cells to defense, so I had no problem at all slipping past his outstretched hands and landing a solid punch right to his nose, knocking him off his feet.
Rubbing my knuckles, I looked back to see that Nimble had stopped laughing and had the last two cavemen incapacitated. She’d stretched her arms out and covered their faces with oversized hands, choking off their air. They were still kicking and scratching at her.
“The more they fight the faster they’ll burn through their air,” she said. “Sorry I had my laughing fit. It was the leopard spots on their loin cloths that sort of pushed me over the edge. Where the hell do they get these costumes?”
“Says the girl dressed in electrical tape,” I said.
The hall shook again, as a deep rumble came from Betty’s room. Nimble still had her hands full so I charged into the room and uselessly fired the rest of my bullets at the tail end of the Spelunker’s mole-dozer as it vanished back down the hole. In frustration, I threw the pistol at the machine. It bounced off, but since the mole-dozer was heading more or less straight down, the pistol dropped again, this time bouncing into the tank-like treads surrounding the machine. With a CLANG, the right tread locked up.
“I can’t believe that worked,” said Nimble, startling me as she looked over my shoulder. I thought she’d still be in the hall choking cavemen. Which, at a second glance, she was. It was just her head bobbing on a ropelike neck that was staring down the hole with me.
A hatch at the back of the mole-dozer swung open. The guy in the orange jumpsuit leapt out, aiming his stalactite gun as he yelled, “Tremble before the wrath of the Spectacular Spel—”
Nimble’s tongue twanged out and jabbed him in the eye. He cursed, pulling the trigger of his stalactite gun, but by now Nimble had jammed an earlobe into the barrel of the gun and the whole thing groaned, then exploded, coating the Spelunker in his own goo.
“Curse you…” he cried, his voice trailing off as the rock around him hardened.
“I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard anyone say ‘curse you’ outside a movie before,” I said to Nimble.
She grinned as her face returned to normal, though normal in her case was sort of in the uncanny valley of a doll that looked almost but not quite human. “I have this weird respect for villains who show a little flair. I mean, he could have just called himself the Spelunker. Hell, he could have just called himself Bob, or John, or whatever his real name is. The fact he pretends is first name is ‘Spectacular’ makes me admire him for his spunk.”
“I’m also not sure I’ve heard anyone use the word ‘spunk,’ either,” I noted.
Our banter was interrupted as another figure emerged from the hatch. She shook her head as she looked at her petrified rescuer with a disdainful eye. Since we’d seen her in the hospital bed, she’d gotten dressed in the skintight hazmat suit she wore as a costume, with a chemical warning logo right in the center of her breasts. Clouds of green gas wreathed her fists as she glared at us and said, in a southern drawl, “Nobody beats up my boyfriend but me! When I’m done with you bitches, they’ll need a mop for what’s left of you!”
Chapter Fourteen
Mental Blocks
Jenny’s Story
Iyanked the collar of my t-shirt up over my mouth and nose to form a completely inadequate gas mask, figuring it was better than nothing. There was no telling what was in the nasty green gas surrounding Chem Queen’s hands, though the air had taken on a distinctive odor of bleach th
at even overpowered the diesel fumes put out by the mole-dozer. Of course, getting gassed was the least of my problems. If Chem Queen got her hands on me with her acidic touch, she could dissolve flesh right down to the bone.
Luckily, Nimble had no bones and her pseudo-skin resisted chemical burns as easily as it shrugged off bullets. Chem Queen took a half dozen punches from Nimble’s rubbery fists before pulling off her containment mask and exhaling a cloud of tear gas. I was caught by the outer edge of the fog and was instantly half blinded and had to retreat further up the hole. Nimble’s eyes proved just as immune to chemical assault as her flesh, so she kept hammering away at Chem Queen.
Chem Queen staggered around, punch drunk. Nimble’s long fingers pulled Chem Queen’s mask back on then found the gloves in Chem Queen’s belt, tugging them over her deadly fingers. She tied Chem Queen’s hands behind her with one stretchy arm, and flattened out her free hand to use as a fan to clear the air.
“All clear,” she called up to me.
Chem Queen recovered her senses enough to let out a string of obscenities that even I found impressive.
“Chem Queen,” I said, dropping into the hole. “We didn’t come here to fight you. We want to talk.”
“I’m not telling you nothing,” she said.
“Anything,” said Nimble.
“Are you the Lawful Legion or the grammar police?” said Chem Queen.
“Today we’re neither,” I said, crouching to find my pistol in the tank treads. “We’re here to help you escape.”
“We’re what?” asked Nimble.
I pulled on the pistol, but it was stuck fast. “I want to get out of here before any Legionnaires arrive. We can use the mole-dozer to escape.”
“Why the hell would you free me?” asked Chem Queen. “How stupid do y’all think I am?”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” I said, bracing my foot against the treads and really putting my back into pulling the pistol free. “I think you’re brainwashed.”