Pinnacle City

by Matt Carter

  They put a bag on my head so I wouldn’t see the way, not that it’s done them a lot of good. Just being in this car I can tell you everywhere it’s been in the last month, and wearing this head bag tells me how many other people it’s been on.

  I feel honored that I’m only the third one … and that they washed it recently.

  After all, nothing’s worse than a dirty head bag.

  Them not trying to stop my power tells me that they’re either not prepared to deal with it (which, with Bystander on their side, is unlikely) or they don’t care what I do and don’t find out and the bag’s meant to show me how they normally treat “people.”

  That’s why I’m nervous.

  Not nervous that I’m gonna die or anything, but nervous enough that I’m wishing I had Harriet and my coat instead of just a light hoodie and a head bag to protect me.

  The SUV pulls to a stop. There’s voices outside the car, only barely above the rain. A door opens and I’m pushed outside.

  My bag’s pulled off.

  “Hi,” Bystander says. She’s holding an umbrella big enough to share. The rest of the guards around us disperse, either back into the SUV or into the large, dark building in front of us to get out of the rain.

  “They trust you alone with me?”

  “Mr. Milgram understands that I am capable of handling you.”

  I grin.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Nothing. I’ve just never heard you talk like an adult before. I remember when every third word out of your mouth was ‘motherfucker.’”

  “People change,” she says, then pulls me close to whisper in my ear. “Just don’t be tellin’ any of those motherfuckers back on Carpenter Street I’ve taken fucking elocution lessons, or I’ll cut you from dick to throat. A girl’s got a reputation to keep up, a’ight?”

  “I haven’t been back to the old street since we were kids, so I’d say you’re cool there.”

  “Good.” She steps back, dropping back into her professional stance.

  “So, this is it?” I ask, eying the massive, darkened building.

  “Yes. You’re not going to pretend you didn’t already get a read on this place and make me dramatically introduce it to you, are you?”

  “If you already had a dramatic speech in mind, I won’t stop you.”

  “Save me the trouble and do it yourself,” she says, smirking.

  I clear my throat dramatically. “Welcome to the Snyder Sanitarium for Lost Souls, one of West Pinnacle City’s most notorious mental health care facilities, even before it was closed down because of all of Dr. Tongue’s human experimentation projects.”

  “You got all that off a read?”

  “I got the name off the read. The rest I got from true-crime shows.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “What?”

  “You’re not taking this very seriously.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m not giving it all the pomp and circumstance, but, seriously? A supervillain setting up shop in an abandoned mental hospital? Isn’t that just asking for the pro-heroes to kick down its doors?”

  “Mr. Milgram knows how to deal with the Guardians,” she says cryptically, walking toward the entrance up ahead. I keep up to stay under the umbrella … and close to her.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She ignores my question. “Did you know that back when they were first discovering superpowers, they thought they were a defect in humanity? That instead of bowing down and worshipping us as gods, as you might expect the ignorant masses of the times to do, they’d send us to places like this for treatment?”

  “No,” I say.

  “I didn’t think so; they like leaving this unfortunate chapter out of the superhuman history books. Because few understood the nature of the condition. Most of these treatments were horrible, pointless mutilations, the kind of things you’d hear about in campfire stories. They did this because they feared us. But when the heroes appeared, they called it water under the bridge and tried to make us think that they suddenly didn’t worry about the rest of us anymore. But the hatred never went away, did it? It’s just been waiting for a new voice to give it strength.”

  For emphasis, she shapeshifts a CARD FOR SENATE button onto her chest, then disappears it.

  “And this?” I motion to the sanitarium.

  She opens the door for me. “A different voice.”

  I had a lot of expectations for Milgram’s lair, as the man’s reputation demands them.

  If you follow the word on the street, Milgram is basically the boogeyman of everything between EPC and the ocean. He rolled into town about a decade ago and took over organized crime almost overnight, eliminating all opposition and assimilating most of the rest; those few independent gangs in town that remain know well enough to pay tribute to him if they mean to keep in business.

  He has his hand in pretty much every crime that has a name.

  Extortion.

  Fraud.

  Illegal drugs, weapons, and sorcery.

  Human trafficking and prostitution.

  Mad science.

  His henchmen kill at least two dozen people a year, enough to never let people forget his name.

  Since few have ever seen him in person, he’s rumored to be an eight-foot tall mountain of pure muscle, with glowing eyes that shoot disintegration beams and sharpened teeth that better help him devour his enemies, constantly surrounded by a harem of a hundred beautiful women he unleashes his lusts and rages upon.

  There are a lot of rumors about the man; when you add them all up, of course it’s going to sound crazy.

  I didn’t know exactly what to expect when Bystander made this meeting, but I assumed it’d be pretty bad.

  It sure as hell wasn’t … this.

  The sanitarium’s interior has been cleaned up and refurbished, with not a single rusted bar or straightjacket in sight. The entrance rotunda is decked out for Christmas, with a giant tree in the center surrounded by a pile of presents almost half as high as the tree itself.

  In addition to Milgram’s well-dressed and ever-present henchmen, there are hundreds of civilians from across the Crescent and WPC, all of whom appear, at least at first glance, to be here of their own free will. Every open room Bystander leads me past gives another sight I wouldn’t have expected in a lair like this.

  Classrooms and playgrounds full of children.

  Gardens lit by brilliant, glowing orbs.

  Medical wards with real doctors, as well as sorcerers and healers, seeing to the needs of the most destitute.

  Bystander enjoys my confusion.

  “Not quite what you expected?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Not every supervillain has to live in a skull-shaped mountain.”

  “Or the back of an abandoned convenience store,” I say, thinking of Padre Peligro’s headquarters.

  She shudders. “Don’t remind me.”

  A couple kids run past us, kicking a soccer ball. Playfully, Bystander joins in and passes it down a nearby hall.

  “This center hosts a number of services for the lower-income citizens of Pinnacle City, from free medical care and drug rehabilitation programs, to education and job placement to help longhairs, and anyone else in need, get on their feet.”

  “And Milgram gets, what, out of this, exactly?”

  “All good things,” she teases, guiding me to one of the large indoor gardens. She always liked to play these games, and I always let her because I was fifteen and in love. I don’t normally entertain such personalities these days, but with her here, I must be losing my mind.

  The garden she’s led me into is paradise, with trees loaded down with heavy, colorful fruit, and a half-dozen or so people collecting them in baskets. A wiry, balding, middle-aged man with pale skin and a stringy ponytail notices us and waves. Casually, he slides down a ladder propped against a tree and brings a basket of apples over to us.

  “Anya! You’re early!” he says excited
ly, craning his neck to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his shoulder.

  “Yes, traffic was merciful today.”

  “It’s not raining too badly outside, I hope?”

  “You can hope, but that’s about all you’ll do on that.”

  “Well, shit. Thank the sorcerers and scientists for the artificial suns then. Want an apple? They’re more pie apples than snacking apples, but really, all apples are pretty fantastic when you get them fresh.”

  Bystander gladly takes an apple from the basket. The few years of Sunday school my parents tried sending me to come back in a rush, but when I realize an apple’s just an apple, I accept one.

  He’s right. They are best fresh.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Don’t mention it. Any friend of Anya is a friend of mine,” he says, setting the basket down and wiping his gloved hands on his apron.

  He then holds out a gloved hand to me. “Pleased to meet you. Hope you guessed my name.”

  Cautious, I take the man’s hand and read it.

  I’ll say this, he’s smart. With gloves on, I can only read the gloves and where they’ve been the past few days, but from them, I know a hint of the man wearing them.

  My blood has turned to ice, but I try to keep cool as I pull my hand away.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Milgram.”

  “While it’s kind of you to say, there’s a glint in your eye that says otherwise. But don’t worry about that, I understand why you lie, and I don’t blame you. After all, I’m the Big Bad Milgram, eater of babies and defiler of virgin’s virtues. I drink the blood of superheroes for breakfast out of a goblet made from a president’s skull. Isn’t that what they say?” he jokes.

  “I’ve … never heard any of those.”

  He laughs. “Well, good! Don’t believe half of what you hear and anything you see, isn’t that what they also say? I’m not some fairy tale monster. I’m just like you, and indeed, most of the people here: a person born gifted in a world that would rather I wasn’t. Would you mind taking a walk with me?”

  A thousand different ways to answer that question run through my head, with most of them ending with me running like hell for the door.

  Instead of listening to any of those more sensible voices, I begin to follow.

  We walk from the garden to the vast, main hall of the sanitarium.

  “You come from the Crescent, yes?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t. I’m a WPC kid, born and raised. I remember a time—a time which doesn’t feel that long ago but certainly must be—when this place was worth being proud of. This was where honest, hardworking people could make a living and spend their free time dreaming of moving to the towers of EPC someday. It was the backbone of the city, until the skies opened up and changed everything,” he says, staring off into space.

  “My family made it through the attack in one piece, but we lost a lot of friends to the post-Killtron WPC exodus. Dad was an utter bastard, but he had a pride to him that made him almost admirable in his less cruel moments. He believed that the people who turned their backs on WPC were traitors, and that it was the manifest destiny of those who stayed behind to rebuild it by whatever means necessary.”

  “From what I’ve seen around here, it’s not working,” I say. A few members of his entourage eye me angrily, but a wave of a hand from Milgram ends that.

  “True progress is never swift.”

  “And it involves building a criminal syndicate?”

  He chuckles. “Crime is an unfortunate byproduct of society, and it will exist no matter what we do. I saw what the vultures were doing to WPC, and I did something about it. Now they all answer to me. I keep criminals honest and fair, providing services as demand dictates and using the profits to better various projects like this across WPC and the Crescent. This is an imperfect process, and occasionally some eggs will have to be broken to make this omelet, but we are doing good work here … and we could really use someone like you to help us out.”

  I think about asking him if he considers the riots and fires consuming the region “eggs” in this case, but know better than to push the point. His attack dogs, save Bystander, all look ready to pounce, and I don’t want to give them any reason to.

  “So, what do you want from me?”

  “Your help with the work that needs to be done. Contrary to what the moguls and tycoons of EPC want you to believe, true power does not lie with money, but with superpowers. He who has the most people with superpowers on his side is truly the one who writes the fate of the world. The superheroes think they understand this, but they only half see it. They think superpowers need only be flashy and destructive to be powerful, but people like you and me, our powers aren’t nearly so showy, and are all the more powerful for it. With a touch, you can find out anyone’s deepest, darkest secrets, and with a word, I can strip people of all the filters that hold them back. I’ve seen what you can do, and Anya here tells me you’re capable of so much more. Work for me, and I can promise you a plum position in the great things that will soon be taking place in Pinnacle City.”

  What he says, he says with complete and practiced earnestness. There’s not a hint of untruth in his eyes, not a trace of deception in his voice. Every part of me wants to believe the man in front of me. My very soul screams that he isn’t the villain everybody says he is, and that he is the exact kind of hero the city needs.

  It’s because of this I know not to trust him.

  His “man of the people” act is too good to be true; it’s a sales pitch used to cover what he’s really up to. Dissident’s told me a lot about Milgram’s operations, and I know he does things there are no excuse for.

  He’s good. Too good.

  I need to keep an eye on Milgram but, more importantly, I need to be careful.

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Please do. Should you ever need to get in touch, Anya will be more than happy to make that possible.”

  A henchman, a young blonde man with tattoos of flames going up his left arm, jogs up behind Milgram and taps him on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he says.

  “Yes, Effigy?” Milgram says distractedly.

  “It’s time.”

  “Oh, good. I’m going to play Santa and hand out presents to the kids in our literacy center. If you’d like to stick around, I wouldn’t mind having an extra elf!” he says, cheerfully.

  Correction: I need to be really careful about this man.

  Bystander fingers the fabric of my trench coat, hanging by the door of my apartment.

  “Nice coat. Reactive absorption polymers?”

  “Something like that,” I say, pouring us a drink.

  “Stuff’ll absorb most impacts, gunshots, knives, fire, cold …”

  “Same materials the superheroes wear.”

  “The same expensive materials.”

  “What can I say, I got friends with expensive taste.”

  This is half true. Dissident got this for me not long after we met on the street, reasoning that if I wouldn’t join her in her vigilantism, at least the coat would keep me mostly protected when she wasn’t around to save me. I don’t tell Bystander this because I want to keep that smile on her face.

  “Me too. Mr. Milgram gets my suits made from similar materials so they’ll shift forms with me,” she says, twirling around to show off her leotard.

  “It suits you,” I say, handing her a glass.

  “Thanks,” she says, plopping down on my couch. She looks around at my apartment, at the dim, buzzing lights, the cracked paint on the walls, the leaky spots in the ceiling that collect in the scattered pots and pans I’ve set out. I sit at the opposite end of the couch, a glass in hand, my other hand unconsciously sweeping some of the crap off my coffee table into the trash can. She knows me, who I am, what I’m like, and I know she doesn’t care about shit like this, but I still feel the unconscious need to impress her.

  Swirling her glass aro
und after taking a sip, she asks the question I know she’s been dying to ask. “So, what’d you think of Mr. Milgram?”

  If only I had an easy answer.

  I debate how much I want to lie, stalling by finishing off and refilling my glass.

  Looking into her black eyes, remembering the long talks she and Marco and I used to have about what we’d be when we grew up, I probably make the wrong choice.

  “I think he’s a madman who’s really good at holding the mad in check when he needs to, who’s aiming to take over the city. He gains devotion through his charitable acts, but what he’s really doing is grooming Crescent residents and children into henchmen while keeping them around to act as human shields. I also think, given how massive and difficult to hide his base of operations is, that he has connections somewhere high up who keep the police and pro-heroes off his back.”

  “So what?” Bystander says.

  “That’s … not quite the response I was expecting.”

  “What, you’d thought I’d drunk the Milgram Kool-Aid?”

  “Well … yes? The man’s built an impressive cult of personality.”

  “Give me a little credit,” she scoffs. “I haven’t survived this long by following every guy with a superpower and a slick pitch.”

  “Padre Peligro?” I propose.

  “That was one time. I’ve raised my standards since.”

  “Milgram is raised standards?”

  “Padre Peligro was a fool, but Milgram’s the real deal. He understands strategy and has better connections than most War on Villainy era villains ever did, and when he says he’s going to do something he does.”

  “But he’s exploiting people. Exploiting you.”

  “Again, I say, so, fucking, what?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I’m a superpowered minority woman from the Crescent who has to keep constant mental focus to pass for a normal human being. No matter what I do with my life, I’ll be exploited. At least this way, if I’m being exploited, I’ll be exploited by someone on the winning side, and I’ll get to do some exploiting of my own. For all the shit in my past, in our past, I’ve earned the right to deliver some payback.”