Dreadnought

by April Daniels

  “It’s all still top secret. There were some glitches; all the test subjects died within six months except Granddad. But that’s only for the people who were directly treated with the serum. If you get it through your parents, it only carries a fifty-percent risk of leukemia within ten years of exposure. When I was born, I had three brothers. Now I have one.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Ain’t nothing to worry your mind about.” She sets her arm on my shoulder. “I’ve been in remission for ten years, and I get a blood screen every other month.”

  The complications I’ve been dealing with seem petty and insignificant all of the sudden. I want to say something profound and insightful. What I come out with is, “That sucks.”

  “Eh, you get used to it. You won’t be telling nobody about this, by the way.” She says this with the kind of vehemence that lets me know that, superpowers or not, this isn’t a subject I want to make her angry about. “We know the serum’s effects are heritable. The Feds don’t, and we aim to keep it that way. They’ve done enough to my family already.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” Her body relaxes, and we look back out across the intersection. She brushes back her jacket, and flips a switch on a radio strapped to her belt that has a wire running up to her right ear. “Let’s see what’s on for tonight.”

  “Is that a police scanner?”

  “Hell no. By the time we hear it on the police scanner, it’s time to leave.” She fiddles a little with her earbud, pulls it out, peels some tape off it, and sticks it back in. “No, at the moment it’s tapped into a few private alarm companies.” She fishes in her jacket and comes up with a small roll of electrical tape. She snips a short length off with the scissors on a multitool. “That’s where we’ll get our first sniff, and then I’ll switch over to the police band to know when the bacon’s getting ready to stick its nose in. When I tell you to get, you get, understand?” Calamity asks as she retapes the earbud into her ear. Pretty much no matter how hard she jumps around, that earbud won’t come out now.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I sketch out a sloppy salute.

  “I warned you about that mouth, partner.” She punches me lightly in the arm.

  So we sit and we wait for something to happen. My first hour of real caping turns out to be a lot quieter than I thought it would be. We sit and we chat and get to know one another. It’s weird. We never hung out at school before, and in fact I was barely aware of her existence. But now, sitting on a roof at night in costume, we seem to know each other better than we ever did back in the real world. That’s what this feels like, like I’ve left my life behind. Here, it’s totally normal for a girl dressed like a cowboy to be parkouring all over the city, and for me to be floating along behind her. Here, it’s not any kind of problem for me to be a girl. Here, no one has ever called me a boy.

  Calamity tells me about the adventures she’s had caping around the city, and I tell her about how I transitioned. When I tell her about David, and how he suddenly became a jerk overnight, she surprises me by nodding along. “He is not blessed with an overly positive reputation among the girls I know at school,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  The accent drops. “I mean he’s a frickin’ creeper! You never noticed?”

  “No?”

  “Yeah. There ain’t a skinny girl in our year he hasn’t made a pass at. Ain’t nothing wrong with flirting, but he don’t even shower first. He does nothing to pretty himself up, and then he’s always sulky when someone brushes him off. Maybe that kind of thing is hard to see when you’re a boy—”

  “I was never a boy,” I say, sharper than I intend to. “I mean, I was always a girl. But now people can see it.”

  Calamity shrugs. “Fair enough,” she says, like I corrected her about my hair color. “But he couldn’t see you were a girl, either. So he didn’t treat you like one.”

  For a while I’m silent, trying to decide if I really didn’t see this side of him, or if I was only ignoring it because it wasn’t my problem. He never seemed creepy to me before. Lots of things have changed. Eventually, I say, “I was hoping he’d get over it.”

  “Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ in there.”

  I repeat to her what he said as we last parted, and she sucks in a breath. “You’re kidding.”

  “No.” It sucks, really, and I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about it. With everything that’s been happening, it’s been easy to jump from distraction to distraction all day and ignore what happened between us. But now it’s kind of lying out there in the open, and I can’t seem to look away again.

  My best friend in the world called me a tranny and said he hoped someone would rape me.

  I don’t really know how to deal with that. Maybe nobody knows how to deal with that.

  What David said to me settles over us like a sodden blanket. Sirens pass us in the distance, and I look up hopefully, thinking maybe something is going down that will distract us. Calamity shakes her head. “That’s a paramedic. Nothing we can do.”

  This thing keeps happening, this thing where something amazing happens to me, and then before I can even really enjoy it, somebody comes along and kicks mud in my face. It starts slowly. A few words here, a sentence there. Calamity dips her head encouragingly, and I start to talk about it. Finally, I get to be who I want to be, and to stop pretending to be something I’m not. There’s nothing wrong with being a boy, but that’s not who I am, and I never have been. But instead of being happy for me for being able to live as a girl, they all want to make me miserable, like I did something wrong and need to be punished. I hate it so much, and as I talk about it, I am surprised by how much heat comes into my voice. I guess I didn’t know how angry I am. My fingers start to crack and crumble the bricks I’m sitting on. One of the bricks shatters and sends a little spray of masonry shrapnel out into the street.

  There’s a stunned moment of silence, and then we’re both fighting not to laugh too loud. We roll back onto the roof and clap our hands to our mouths. For reasons we can’t explain, this is the funniest thing we have ever seen. We laugh until our ribs ache, sprawled out on the roof under the glowing orange sky. It’s not really funny, and when we realize that, we laugh even harder.

  Finally, the laughter leaves us, and we clamber back over to the edge of the building. We sit in a comfortable silence for a while, watching the street, waiting for something to happen. I don’t really care if anything happens one way or the other, I think. I’m just glad to be out of the house, away from the real world and all the things that try to push me down into the mud.

  Eventually, I get a little bored and pull out my phone from the pouch it sits in on my belt. When Calamity sees it she raises an eye. “That your everyday phone?”

  “I only have one.” After a moment of experimentation I find I can still use the touch screen through my gloves.

  “Best be fixing that at your earliest convenience,” says Calamity. “Dangerous to be caping with a phone that can be traced back to you.”

  “By the time someone is able to take my phone from me, I think I’m going to have bigger problems.” I reach down to my side and fiddle around until I can find the little cord that spools out from my belt line.

  “Or, they might pick your pocket. Or, it might fall out in battle. Best be taking this seriously. You should get a burner and use that instead.”

  “When my family is magically rich enough to afford that, I’ll let you help me shop for one.” Finally I get the cord pulled out again, and plug it into the mini-USB port on my phone.

  “What are you doing, anyhow?”

  “‘Accessing the higher functions of my suit,’ she called it.” My phone’s screen goes dark, and an application begins to launch. (Very slowly, of course. This is a knockoff brand.)

  “Who?”

  “Valkyrja.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes are wide.

  “She’s really nice in person.” I smile at Calamity. “She talks almost
as weird as you, though.”

  “One of these days you’ll understand how deeply that wounds me,” she says, and doesn’t sound hurt at all. “So what exactly are those higher functions?”

  “Other than changing color, I don’t know yet.”

  “You mean there’s more than that?”

  “Looks like it.” Several colored icons are popping up on my phone. I read off their labels. “Diagnostics, repair mode, color shifting, and something about radar and thermal masking modes.”

  “How the hell—”

  I shrug. “It’s hypertech. Doc Impossible made it for me. Oh hey, it’s got Bluetooth.”

  “White girls get all the cool toys.”

  “Yes, that’s why they gave this to me. Because I’m white.”

  Calamity drops her eyebrows at me and I feel silly already. “Are you seriously whining about a little bit of teasing?”

  “No,” I mutter.

  “Good. Because that’d be fucking petty, and I’d hate to have to stop liking you.”

  “So you like me.”

  “I haven’t shot you yet, so it does stand to reason.” Something incredibly stupid is about to come out of my mouth, but I’m saved by Calamity straightening up and pointing across the street. “I’ll be damned. Someone’s robbing that liquor store.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Calamity scooches off the front of the building and drops two stories straight down with a flutter of her jacket. The sound of her fall is louder than her landing, and she rolls up to a crouch behind a car parked across the street from the liquor store. I drop down behind her, just fall off the building and wait to catch myself until I’m only a foot or so in the air. The harsh fluorescent light pouring out from the store’s barred windows makes it easy to see inside. A man in a hooded sweatshirt is pointing a pistol with what looks like an extended clip at someone we can’t see behind the counter.

  Calamity draws an enormous revolver from her belt and a bolt of alarm snaps through me. I grab her by the shoulder. “You’re not going to shoot him, are you?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s what guns are for.” She shakes me off.

  “You can’t kill people! We’re the good guys!”

  Calamity flicks the cylinder open and draws out one of the bullets nested inside. She holds it up from the shadows for me to get a good look at it. The tip is strange. It looks orange, and almost seems translucent. “I’m loaded with jelly rounds. These things have no penetration whatsoever. It’ll be like hitting him with a baseball bat.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Are you sure?” asks Calamity with theatrical concern. “Because I could fall back on my impressive arsenal of harsh language if that’s too violent for you.”

  “Just don’t kill anyone,” I mutter.

  “Haven’t yet. Don’t intend to start tonight.” She slips the round back into the cylinder and snaps it shut. “Now, if it’s all the same to you I’d like to snag this guy before he gets away.”

  From across the street we hear the electric ding-dong of someone passing through the door, followed by running footsteps. The robber is sprinting down the wet sidewalk now, and a terrified-looking clerk is rushing to slam and lock the door behind him.

  “Damnation. There he goes,” says Calamity, standing. “I’m gonna herd him into the next alley; cut him off!”

  She doesn’t wait for a reply before she breaks into a sprint and starts shadowing him parallel down the street. I pop up into the orange sky and trail him closely. This is something I’ve never done before, but I know I can get pretty close to him before he’ll notice—I’ve already realized most people never look up.

  Calamity waits until he’s near the mouth of an alley, and then steps out from behind the cab of a parked panel van. Her magnum barks twice. A car window near him explodes, and he drops his gun. Calamity is back in cover before he knows what’s going on. The robber snatches up his gun with his other hand, loops his cash bag over his shoulder, and ducks into the alley. It’s narrow, crowded with empty milk crates and dumpsters. I wait until he’s about halfway down the alley, and then spear down from the air. I anchor myself in the lattice…

  When he hits me, it’s like he ran full-tilt into a concrete post. My injured ribs give a faint cry of protest, but he gets the worst of it by far. I can feel his body bend around me, his flesh press and stretch, his bones flex. It is unspeakably gross, and for a terrified moment I’m scared he will burst upon me. He bounces off me and lands flat on his back. A heartbeat later, he heaves convulsively, his bruised chest gasping for air, and he curls up in pain.

  “Hey, man, are you okay?” I take a step forward.

  The robber rolls over, swings his gun up, sprays me down with hot lead. The burping roar of his submachine gun is astonishingly loud in this narrow brick canyon. The alley’s gloom vanishes as a foot-long muzzle flash leaps out at me. A line of explosions ripples up my chest, neck, face. The shock of it drives me back a step. The noise, the thudding, stinging impacts, the unexpected heat and light—it’s all so much, so fast. I should be dead. A burst like that at this range should zip me open and leave me as a cooling bag of meat on the ground.

  But I’ve got superpowers, so it just smarts like hell. There’s a moment of silence as we both try to process what just happened. I recover first.

  “Dude! Not cool!”

  I can see the fear seize him. He’s older than I thought he was at first, and his face is rough and lined. Thick salt-and-pepper stubble covers his chin, and when his lips pull back in fear I can see crooked, rotting teeth. He’s holding one of his hands tight to his stomach, and three of his fingers are badly broken. For a moment I feel pity for him. Nobody ends up looking like this if they have an easy life.

  But then I remember he just shot me about thirty times in the chest and face. That clerk he was holding at gunpoint doesn’t have bulletproof skin like I do. What would this guy have done if he thought the cash wasn’t coming fast enough?

  The robber gets to his feet and starts running the other way. Calamity steps into the alley from her end and casually shoots him twice in the chest. I can hear the breath explode from him, and he crumples up, falls to his knees. He raises his gun again, and she shoots him in his good hand as she strolls towards him. His gun goes skittering into the shadows.

  “You good, hun?” she calls to me. Her gaze is locked on the thief, her aim steady, straight at his head.

  “I’m fine. Turns out I really am bulletproof.”

  Calamity nods. “Good to hear. Let’s get this feller trussed up.”

  Halfway through having his wrists zip-tied together, our thief starts blubbering. It’s weirdly uncomfortable to hear. Even though he was a terrifying threat to an innocent clerk, we outclass him so much it’s kind of pathetic. As we frog-march him half a block back to the liquor store, it’s hard not to feel a little bit like we’re bullying him. He sobs and sags, and we’re carrying him as much as he’s walking.

  Calamity must see that on my face, because she says to me quietly, “I know it’s weird at first. Remember, this guy is a violent felon. You don’t gotta feel bad about playing dirty with his kind.” She gives him a shake. “Ain’t that right, Sweet Pea?”

  The liquor store clerk’s eyes get wide as dinner plates when we knock on the glass door and wave at him. He almost drops the phone he’s speaking into. I hold up the bag of money, and he says something quick into the phone before putting it down and vaulting over the counter. He unlocks the door, and up close I can see his eyes are red and puffy. “You got him?” he shouts excitedly. “Oh, man, thank you!”

  “Not a problem, partner,” says Calamity. I hand over the bag of money, and the clerk clutches it like a lost child.

  “I thought I was going to lose my job!” he says. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Glad to help,” I say.

  “Is this him?” the clerk says, catching sight of the thief where we’ve left him propped against a car. The clerk stalks towards him. “Not
so tough now, are you, ya piece of—”

  I catch him by the shoulder just as he’s winding up to kick the robber square in the stomach. “No.”

  “Wh—what? He just robbed me!”

  “I don’t care. I’m not going to let you beat up a defenseless man right in front of me.” I squeeze his bicep just enough to let him know how strong I am.

  Calamity puts a finger to her earbud. “Cavalry’s coming,” she says.

  “Good.” I turn to the clerk. “We’re going to be watching until the police show up. Tell them what happened so they can put him in jail. If you hit him before they arrive, I’ll come over and report you for assault. Understand?” I let go of his shoulder.

  He steps away from me quickly. His cheeks are turning pink. “Yeah, fine. Whatever.”

  I stay and watch him until he picks the phone back up and starts talking into it again. Calamity and I vanish back into the shadows. When we’re back up on the roof overlooking the liquor store, we sit back and wait for the cops to show.

  “You did good, partner,” she says.

  “Thanks.”

  “I ain’t sure I’d be so eager to protect someone who shot me like that.”

  The bottom falls out of my stomach. Of course I’d screw it up at the end. Of course. It would have been better to follow Calamity’s lead, but it’s too late now, so I shrug and say, “Well, I…maybe if I thought about it…” and then sort of trail off. Like he said: I don’t even have the sense God gave a tapeworm.

  Her bandanna makes her expression hard to read sometimes, but there’s a thoughtful look in her eyes. “You’re the real deal, aren’t you?”

  “Um?” There’s this weird little flare of hope in my stomach. Maybe I did the right thing after all.

  Calamity nods. “You’re gonna be a great Dreadnought someday.”

  “Oh. No, I don’t think so.” I curl my knees up in front of me.

  “Why not?”

  I think back to that meeting at Legion Tower, and how Carapace was so set against me taking Dreadnought’s name. I could fight for it, make it a fait accompli, I know I could. But the mere thought of doing that fills me with shame. Dreadnought was a fearless champion. I’m a wimp, and an idiot. If I wasn’t, wouldn’t I be able to stand up for myself? If I deserved the name, I wouldn’t keep letting Mom bribe me into helping her pretend everything is fine at home. I would have said something. I don’t deserve to be Dreadnought. Hell, I don’t deserve any of this. I may be a horrible person, but I’m not going to slander the dead by pretending to be something I’m not. “Dreadnought meant so much to so many people. Also, you know, I’m pretty stupid sometimes, and I’m always finding ways to screw up. If people found what a loser I really am…It just seems like I should have a different name. If I even keep doing this.”