Calvin said, “Daddy.”
“When you didn’t pick up … never been more scared.”
“I left it in the bedroom. I had to go back to get it.”
“How’s Jenny?”
“Gary and that guy with the robot eye are talking to her. She held off an army of monsters, but she’s hurt. Alex, please come back.”
“I’ll be there soon. Thank God you’re alive. I love you.” He said the last three words purely by habit. He forgot how angry he was at her for cheating on him until after he hung up.
Alex put his arm around Trista’s shoulder. “We did it.”
Trista’s mouth was agape.
“We saved millions of people, including our friends. What’s wrong?”
Trista pointed at the laptop’s screen as it cycled through the Handler’s pictures of dystopias. “These are our futures.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is what the Handler fought to prevent. He calculated the damage from superhero fights and the increasing rate of mutations. More powers means more divisions, more misunderstandings, more battles, more casualties. There’s no way it will end well.”
“How was attacking major cities supposed to prevent that?”
“He wanted to prove it was possible to stop superpowered violence and for people to reclaim their destiny. He truly wanted to save humanity from us.”
“I get it. We’re the heroes, but we’re not the good guys.”
Chapter Twenty-Four: Redemption
Steve’s hands tingled beneath the thick bandages. He wondered how they would look when they healed.
The torn remains of his rainbow-patterned Pinwheel costume were on the chair beside him. He hated its gaudy colors. He hated the memories it brought back. He hated the cheesy lines he had to recite on-camera, knowing that no matter how good he was Jackie would tear him apart with a thousand "tips." He especially hated that wearing it made him someone else's idea of what he should be.
A winsome brunette in ill-fitting donated clothes entered the waiting room. “Hi.”
Steve looked her over. “Didn’t I save your life last night?”
“That’s me. Marigold. Or Hannah.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you dressed.”
She blushed. “The manager made me do it. He said girls were like me were a dime-a-dozen, and if I didn’t do it he’d get someone who would. It was the only paying gig I got since moving to the city, so …”
“I’d say what that man is, but I don’t like using harsh language in front of a lady.”
She laughed. “I appreciate that. How are your hands?”
“The docs did all they could. I’m waiting for Stormhead to take me and a couple of others back to Griffin Tower.”
“Oh. Is there anything I could do for you until then?”
“Actually, there is.” He pointed to the remote control with his bandaged hand. “Could you turn on the TV? I can’t move my fingers real well.”
She took the remote control and pressed the power button. A reporter said, “It seems Wayne Penobscot can’t be the Midnight Rider. This footage shows the masked vigilante carrying the billionaire-philanthropist from the Langham Hotel.”
“Good for Boston,” said Steve. “Let’s find something local.”
She changed the channel.
The morning news showed footage from New York’s more spectacular battles. One shot showed him making flashes behind a line of charging villains.
“You were amazing out there,” said Hannah. “We were surrounded and you fought on after Stardancer ran away.”
“Well, she … wait, is that her?”
On the television, Stardancer talked into a reporter’s microphone. “Scared? No, not at all. I mean, we superheroes face danger every day. After my old sidekick Pinwheel ran away, I knew what I had to do.”
“Oh, no way,” said Hannah.
“Wish I could say this was out of character for her. She’ll take any excuse to tear me down.”
Stardancer said, “I don’t do this for the glory, I do it for …” a thrown tomato burst on her face.
The camera swung to the side. Ruby waddled with her claws raised. “You liar, Pinwheel saved your chicken-ass!” Stardancer ran away as Ruby grabbed the microphone. “He’s a real superhero. And another thing, he’s not gay.”
“Could you change the channel?” asked Steve. “I’ve been embarrassed enough for one day, and it’s not even noon.”
Hannah pressed the mute button and sat next to him. “You know, the MAB agents also said you’re a great guy. And that you’re not gay.”
“And I thought those guys were jerks.”
“I always thought you were the funniest and nicest of the Young Sentinels. I don’t know how you put up with Stardancer. She’s such a … well, I don’t like to use harsh language in front of a gentleman.”
“The worst part is, I saved her life but I couldn’t save Pete’s.”
“You mean Rock Jock? I didn't see him last night."
"He died. I'll really miss him."
"But he always bullied you.”
“Only when in character. We were actually best friends.”
“I’m sorry. What happened?”
“We were attacked by squid-men. Long story. I couldn’t pull him in the boat, he was too heavy. Agent O’Farrell says we’ll have a memorial service for him.”
Hannah put her hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yeah, I do.”
A nurse pushed Jenny’s wheelchair past the waiting room door. Her right leg was in a fresh cast and her left arm was in a sling.
Another nurse pushed another wheelchair came down another hallway. This one had Deon in it.
When the hallways intersected, Deon waved to Jenny. “Hey, girl, sorry I didn't call last night.” He pointed to the bandage on his head. “I had a lot on my mind.”
Jenny pointed to her sling. “I turned off my phone anyway. What happened to you?”
“Damndest thing. I ran down Arbalest. He pulled over on the shoulder of the road. I told him turn the Guardians back. Then an SUV clipped me with its rearview mirror. I should’ve worn that stupid shiny Goldstreak suit. Maybe then the driver would’ve seen me.”
“Are you okay?”
“Mild concussion, but it knocked me senseless. Arbalest put me on the back of his bike and brought me straight here. What happened to your arm?”
“Got yanked out of joint by an asshole with metal whips.”
“I heard that guy is in another wing of this hospital. Don’t worry, there are a dozen armored MAB agents outside his door.”
“I saw the medics take him out of Griffin Tower. Flayer got mauled by Lou.”
“That guy won’t like you much when he recovers.”
“The first entry in my rogue’s gallery.”
Stormhead approached them. “That is a big moment in any superhero’s career. I’d like to personally thank you for defending Griffin Tower.”
“I did what anyone would do.”
“I won’t lie. We had our doubts about your place among us. We don't anymore.”
“Well, Alex told me to keep a stiff upper-lip during hazing.”
“Hazing? Sorry, I don’t know this word. My English isn’t perfect. Deon, I am also impressed by how you defeated Puca.”
“What?” asked Jenny.
“Yeah, I …” Deon looked away. “I saw her planting bombs, so I switched one that was about to blow up with one she was about to plant.”
“A few citizens took pictures of the explosions. One caught you taking her bomb. I can find it on my phone."
"I don't need to see that. Damn, I killed her. It’s still sinking in."
"She was a terrorist. She was responsible for over forty deaths, hundreds of injuries, and millions of dollars. Your quick thinking means there will be no more.”
“Still, I understand how Pete felt when he killed Pig-Girl. It’s like, I couldn’t think of a way to bring her in
alive.”
“It is a hard thing to take a life, especially for a life-saver like you. We can talk about it later.”
The nurses pushed the wheelchairs to the front doors as Stormhead walked to the waiting room.
Jenny said, “Deon, why didn’t you tell me you took out a supervillainess?”
“I’m not proud of it, but I had to stop her.”
“And you did. You officially lived down that time you peed your pants.”
“It’s weird. When we were Prospects, you were a quitter and I was a coward. Since then, you stuck it out and I got brave. We started as zeroes but became heroes.”
“Does this mean you’re willing to be more than a reservist for the New York Guardians?”
“Nah, I’m serious about med school. A month ago I didn’t have what it took to be a doctor. Agent O’Farrell showed me I had the skills, Griffin Industries game me the scholarship, and some running through Vijay’s brain gave me the confidence. For the next eight years it’s studying, then superheroing.”
“How will you find time for a girlfriend?”
“Guess I’ll have to date a superheroine. And you owe me a date.”
Jenny smiled. “I certainly do. But I’m not going out with my leg in a cast and my arm in a sling.”
Deon got into the car. “Got that taken care of. My mom’s going to stop by Griffin Tower with my Wesley Snipes DVD collection. We’ll watch Art of War, Passenger 57, Blade one and two ...”
Jenny made a sour face as two MAB agents helped her and Pinwheel into the backseat of a waiting car.
“Yo, I’m joking.” Deon followed her into the car. “After what we’ve been through, we need comedy. We’ll start with Major League.”
Several floors up, Trista returned to Vijay’s room with a small bag in her hands.
The machines attached to Vijay showed stable vital signs. His irises didn't move beneath their glazed cover. The respirator made his chest rise and fall in an unnatural rhythm.
Trista sat on the bed. She took a framed picture of an Indian woman, a small silver statue of Shiva, and a fresh samosa out of the bag.
She tilted the mask a bit to allow the scent of the samosa under the respirator mask before taking a bite of it. The spices mixed with fresh dough in her mouth, a sensation she savored while trying to remember mundane mornings with her family.
With these memories in her mind, she lifted his eyelids and stared into his glassy pupils. Slowly she established a new connection with Vijay’s mind.
His mindscape was a softer and warmer place than before. There were only suggestions of dimensions, with width and depths changing with smooth fluidity.
Trista flowed formlessly to a flat space the exact same color as the green plastic table in Vijay’s boyhood home. Clouds against the empty sky were shaped like stacks of plates on kitchen shelves. Above them were rectangles the color of cereal boxes. This was what Vijay associated the scent of samosas with - lazy mornings where he was happy without knowing it. Since Trista invoked her sense of familiarity and tasted something similar, she blended in with the feelings.
In the midst of the lucidity Trista had no trouble finding the discordance. At the corner of the table a small storm of random thoughts tried to fill the empty space. Shimmering strands reached on both sides to find out where the samosas came from but couldn’t make a connection that held itself together. Frustration emanated from the inability to fill this lacuna, this hole in the narrative, this missing thing that couldn’t be remembered.
A skinny boy sat on a pile of jagged chunks of tarnished silver at the edge of this chaotic nothingness.
“Hello, Vijay.”
The boy’s face was bruised. His shrank and became blurry when she approached. Trista felt herself shift from the scared girl in a nullifier to an angel in white to the fishnet-clad supervillainess, first sexually exaggerated and then defined by a cruel smirk, in the speed of dreams.
“No, no more.” He faded into the background. “Don’t take anything else. I know I can’t stop you, but please don’t.”
The mindscape shifted. The rounded corners of the table became jagged cliffs, the calm green plastic became dark and tinged with red, and the warm winds of childhood memories became stinging sheets of painful shards.
“I’m not here to take.” Trista focused her consciousness. She took control of her image and became a girl in oversized blue sweatshirt and leggings.
Trista broke the connection to look at the picture. She set the Indian woman’s image in her mind and reconnected with Vijay to insert the image into the lacuna. The presence of warmth tempered by a few sharp points of discipline fit perfectly. The mindscape's painful edge melted to softer forms.
“I visited your family this morning,” said Trista. “Your father is still mad that you stole his credit cards. But Palak, your little brother, he misses you. He gave me a picture of your mother. You kept it over your old computer. I put it next to your hospital bed.”
“I …” Vijay reached out to the presence of his mother as it blurred into the softening background, marred by small black circles. “It’s not coming together. There’s something missing. I don’t know what it is, but I need it.”
“I’ll give back everything I took.” Trista exhaled. The association webs of hacking intertwined with the memories of Vijay’s mother. The black holes vanished. Everything was as vague as before, but somehow it became stronger and more defined to Trista.
The mindscape softened before turning sharp again. “Why are you doing this? So you can tear them from me again?”
“I’m trying to make things right.” Trista shifted to the image of Mind Dame. “I allowed this side of myself to take over when you resisted me. I want to believe this isn’t really me, that the Idea Man made me an extension of his will, but now I’m starting to wonder if this is who I really am and the way I act as Trista is the forced identity. I truly don’t know anymore.”
Vijay picked up a broken piece of silver. “This was what I used to me, my idealized self. But you destroyed it.”
“I know what it’s like to have someone take what they want by force. It destroys your idea of who you are and what you believe you can be. It makes you feel like you're no longer a part of the world.”
“It wasn’t just you who hurt me. Everyone always thinks they're better than I am."
"Your brother doesn't."
"In school I got beat up by the jocks and chewed out by teachers. My hacker mentors didn’t take me seriously until I wiped their hard drives. I thought I could still beat the villains at their own game. I thought I could outthink them. I couldn’t. They manipulated me and threw me away.”
“What about what you did to other people? You betrayed our team. Your father told me how you stole his credit cards to buy your costume. You also uploaded that video of Lady Amazing taking a shower. She was kind to you before then. And we all got along in the Prospects before you told everyone that I used to be a villain. That made everyone hate me.”
Vijay stood. “So what? What about what the world did to me? Do you think it was easy getting beaten up on the playground because I’m not white? Or being too skinny to get girls to like me? Did I deserve to have my mom shot to death for the fifty dollars in her cash register? Too bad I hurt your feelings. You don’t care about me, why should I care about you?”
Trista picked up a piece of the Silver Shiva battlesuit. “The world is a cruel place. You want to protect yourself and fight back. And you don’t care who you hurt to keep from being hurt.”
“Who are you to judge me? You tried to take over the world.”
“Not me personally, but … I can’t judge you. And I don’t want to.”
Vijay looked at the disappearing space. The image of his mother was vague yet vivid, a scattered presence like the sky after a sunset. His mindscape was serene again.
“You returned what you stole.” He tapped the air as if typing on a keyboard. The mindscape turned to the black-and-dark-green shades of a
hacking program’s visual interface. Small green numbers appeared on the screen. “Everything.” He stood straight. The bruises faded from his face. He grew into a young man in his full Asura costume.
Trista said, “I saw what the future holds. There are too many people who can impose their wills on the world and force it into their image. I don’t mean only the villains. Heroes are every bit as capable of being arrogant and short-sighted. We have so much power, but we'll still make mistakes. That’s what the Handler figured out.”
“And, for that, he had me shot?"
“You and the other hackers were a threat to his spyware network. His power came from information. I took your talents to beat him.”
“Good. Screw that guy.”
“He did horrible things because he truly believed he was saving the world. And he may have been right.”
“How?”
“He wanted to end the age of heroes and villains to make the world safer for everyone. The constant fighting among us escalates our worst qualities. Suffering makes our convictions much stronger. It makes us ignore the wrong things we do. The Handler has an artist’s vision of what the world can be, but like anything created by an imperfect person it was flawed. He could've succeeded if he didn't underestimate the selflessness of true heroes, men like Agent O’Farrell can sacrifice everything for the benefit of the world.”
The mindscape quaked as a seizure rocked Vijay’s brain. Trista focused her energy on calming the storms of neural energy all around them. The discordant energy subsided.
“Why should I care about the world?” said Vijay. “I know I can’t really see or hear. This isn’t real, but I can’t wake up. I’m trapped in this endless dream.”
“Maybe not. The doctors said your brain is healing thanks to the healing-factor blood Deon spread through it. You should regain some functions. And when the bullet hit your brainstem, it spared your frontal lobe. Your thoughts and memories are intact.”
“So, if I’m lucky, I’ll live as a brain-damaged cripple and remember when I wasn’t one.”
Trista gestured to the piles of tarnished silver. Their tarnish vanished when they came together to form a silver Shiva statue identical to the one on the table next to Vijay’s hospital bed.
The Prospects (Book 2): Nothing Poorer Than Gods Page 26