I smack him on the arm, hard enough to make a point, soft enough to keep my hand from stinging afterwards. “I loathe you,” I say, my voice sulky as I fidget in my seat. “And your stupid hat. And your clown car.”
“Aw, peaches, you ain't got to worry none. Edward retired last year to become a very large kindergarten teacher. In Iowa, no less.”
I could make a crack about why anyone would want to go to Iowa on purpose, but it wouldn't be the first time an ex of mine has packed their bags and departed for destinations unknown in the handful of years following our break-up. I can never decide if I drive my exes to mass migration or if I just possess an attraction for people I suspect won't want to live in the same city, state, or quite possibly on the same planet after we break up. I suppose I should be shocked Hazel has yet to board a shuttle to Mars just to escape having to see me anymore.
Oh, I must be desperate for distraction if this is the subject I'm choosing to dwell on.
Luckily, Nate turns the car into the entrance to an underground garage at that moment and waves his official Brigade keycard in front of the sensor. It beeps as the neon-blue card passes through the air near the flickering red light, then spouts a thin violet light which flattens horizontally and scans Nate's long-suffering face. A moment later, a flexible metal arm whips out from the side of the box, and Nate sighs before offering his palm, the tentacle poking a glistening needle into the center for what I can only imagine is another DNA test.
“That's new,” I murmur.
Nate pulls a discontented face as he holds up his palm for examination as if the pierced skin hasn't already healed over, delicate and baby-smooth. “At least the damn security nurses said please, thank you kindly, and sorry for the hurtin',” he says in a low annoyed voice, and the sensor's sweet feminine computerized voice pipes up with, “Voice print confirmed,” before the garage gate fades and shimmers down to a molecular level to let us in, yet another security feature I missed out on.
It doesn't occur to me until Nate pulls into his parking space in the small garage, the gate solidifying behind us into typical steel rails, that the computer didn't bother to confirm the identity of his passenger. Perhaps I should have taken that as a warning.
After we emerge with a stretching of tired muscles and a smoothing of wrinkled clothes, I give myself a moment to gather my composure. From what thin information Nate has been able to compile on the ride back to the city from calling the gang at the Brigade on his cell phone, the body's already been released by the police. If Morris were anyone else, if he were human or died of natural causes or had anyone to retrieve him, the body would still be under a medical examiner's knife, open wide to the knowing eye of a coroner. Instead, the police handwaved the legislative pomp and circumstance and handed the body over to the Superhero Licensing Bureau for disposal, presumably already thinking of the kegs they'll buy and the frilly cocktails they'll swill in celebration.
I suddenly, desperately want to go home.
“So what's the plan?”
I glance Nate's way, taking in his puppy-dog eagerness with genuine confusion. “What plan?”
Nate chuckles. “Hell, Vera, it wasn't my idea to sneak into the SLB fridge.”
“Who's sneaking in? I'm going to walk in the front door and ask.”
I start towards the door to the glass enclosure around the elevators, not waiting for Nate to catch up. I imagine I caught him off-guard by just stating I'd walk in the front door and request a viewing. Knowing Nate, he got his hopes up, expecting a complicated break-in under cover of darkness, a dramatic delusion stolen wholesale from some cerebral crime thriller. They can't be giving him much to do with the Fairness Brigade if that's the case, if he's only here to satisfy his never-ending craving for adventure.
He appears at my side as I jab the basement-level button for the elevator hard enough to make one of my nails cry out painfully in protest.
“You're just going to ask?” he says.
“Yup.”
“You think that'll work?”
I shrug. “Worth a shot.”
I step into the elevator feigning confidence, head held high, hoping I don't look half as anxious as I feel. Nate darts into the elevator just before the doors slide shut, his jewel-green eyes reflecting his concern. It's only after the mirrored doors of the elevator close that I get a gander of what my pitiful ass looks like after the terrible, no-good, awful day this has been. It's hard to believe the day isn't even over yet, midnight still a little while off. I flinch as I let my frazzled appearance soak in.
My curls frizz in the warmth of the enclosed space, my blunt-cut bangs rapidly deflating. My stockings relax and slouch a bit, my hem crinkled from being sat on for too long. The fluorescent light does my skin no favors, accentuating how my makeup and lipstick's long since worn away, cradling the bags under my eyes. I could be a blurry Bettie Page, a photo taken in the wrong lighting, a candid thrown away at the end of the shoot.
It takes a moment, but the sight perks me up. I look like I've been wrung through a ringer. It might come in handy.
“So what should I do?” Nate says.
I glance his way, my lips pulling into a sly smile. “Can you stand there and be pretty?”
“Oh, I think I can handle that much.”
“Are you going to start anytime soon?”
He beams, and his eyes sparkle, a wild tempting promise. “I'll get you,” he whispers. “You just wait.”
When the elevator doors slide open, revealing us to the woman behind the counter, Nate and I are almost too busy swapping mischievous grins to exit.
“Excuse me,” the woman says.
Her voice is a slamming force, served with a bite of military precision, and Nate and I move without thinking, bolting out of the elevator like spooked kittens. We stand there in the dimly lit entranceway, unsettled and unfocused, me tottering slightly in my heels, Nate stuffing his fists in his pockets and shuffling his feet like a recalcitrant child.
“The cafeteria is on the third floor,” she announces, her tone softening a little like brushed silk, the sound smooth and rich. She stands poker-straight and proud behind the clear sliding partition, her pressed white lab coat draping her reed-thin body. Her neatly divided cornrows swing down her back, secured out of the way with a knotted length of string that looks as if it's been snipped from a package wrapped in brown paper and plastered with mailing labels.
Her eyes, flinty dark pools, make me wish I could feel more of my powers than just the faint stirring yawns of it waking from its baconite-induced nap.
“Oh, we ain't looking for the cafeteria, doc,” Nate says, tipping his hat to her, pulling a wide harmless smile. I let him slather on the country-boy charm good and thick, following close behind him as he approaches the front desk.
The doctor – her lab coat says “Dr. Hale”; the child's crayon drawing taped on the wall behind her says it's for “Aunt Melody” with the D written backwards – stiffens as we approach, presumably recognizing us. I struggle with a smile, wondering if I'm supposed to be thrilled or saddened or scared about Morris, if Mom or Dad have released any sort of official statement to the press for me to go by. Maybe I should be wearing a pointy hat and repeatedly blowing a noisemaker or something.
“We're here –”
“– for the new meat,” she says, frowning at me now. A pang of suspicion shoots through me, raising tingling gooseflesh on my forearms. “Who's next? Your second cousin, three times removed? I've already had to wipe spit off the guy twice already.”
Nate makes a muffled choking sound.
“I promise to behave,” I say. My voice comes off weak and shaky.
She sniffs and shakes her head, but a moment later the buzzer for the main door echoes. Nate nudges me in the side, a silent encouragement, and I shake the vague unease from my head before pushing open the door to the SLB's morgue.
Dr. Hale's waiting for me when the door clicks shut behind me, a translucent green clipboard clutched in one ar
m. Without a smudged plexiglass partition between us, it's easier to see the plain yellow T-shirt and well-worn track pants underneath her lab coat, the battered once-white sneakers she must wear every workday poking out from under mud-stained hems. She's taller than me, taller even than Nate, and when she grimaces at the dress clinging to my curves and the heels clacking a steady tattoo in my wake I feel like I've committed a felony.
“You wear that to fight crime?” she asks.
“Oh, I don't fight crime anymore.”
I casually forget to mention that my official costume hadn't been much more sensible. Of course, teleporters don't exactly have to worry about running in heels or megalomaniacs being alerted by the familiar tap of stilettos.
“How lovely for you,” she says, her tone dripping with sarcasm, then starts walking down the morgue's sole corridor, clearly expecting me to chase after her. I take a deep breath and follow with a respectful silence.
Superheroes don't just die. Neither do supervillains, for the most part. It would be nice if we all simply dropped of heart attacks or strokes or malignant tumors like normal people, if we were just harmless slabs of limp meat after that. We're not. We travel through lives that map out our existences in mushroom clouds and alien attacks, radioactive animals and genetic anomalies, and come out the other side pitted with track marks that glow in the dark and explode on sight. Morticians don't just throw us in a box and drop us in a hole. We should be so lucky.
We're delivered to the SLB's morgue, a sterile soulless storage center, and some overgrown child genius in a lab coat rolls us into a room the size of a closet and about as personable. The doctor checks off a mark on their clipboard, the first of many checkmarks. Your slowly decaying corpse gets a check every day if it doesn't inexplicably disintegrate in a cloud of dust or shapeshift into an entirely different person. If your body can refrain from giving the janitor exceptional amounts of cancer or erupting to reveal a gestating alien larva after a year, your family receives the honor of burying what's left of you.
Most families of superhumans, evil or not, contribute their loved ones to science in the end. After all, it's not as if science doesn't already have them.
Each candy-apple red door sports large numbers painted in lemon yellow above a rectangular viewing window. Computerized readouts report statistical information in minute detail on screens on the walls next to the doors. A quick peek into each window as we pass reveals the rooms to be filled with stark fluorescent lighting and a chill that manifests in a slight frost on the inside of the glass.
I'm going to hate being dead in this place.
A horror-movie creak echoes from the smothered interior of one of the crypts, and I can't resist peering in at the body rearranging itself inside. The ribcage of the unfamiliar bare-chested corpse cracks open in a tidy straight line down the sternum, separating with ease as though hinged in the back.
A moment later, a startlingly thick cloud of Venusian pixie bats pour out of the body. Their highly poisonous stingers drip venom all over the floor of the crypt and dot the tiles, searing bubbling circles in their surface.
Dr. Hale's slim hand appears out of nowhere, spooking me as she drops a detailed code into the touchpad beside the door.
As soon as she pushes the “Execute” button, the temperature gauge on the screen races abruptly upward. All of the air in the crypt appears to glow bright and swim with rippling heat. In the blink of an eye every living creature in the room disintegrates and rains dust onto the floor in an incinerated layer of cremated grit an inch thick.
“I've been waiting all day for him to do that,” Dr. Hale casually declares.
Stunned, I trail after her.
It's one thing to know what the SLB's private morgue is for. It's quite another to see it in action.
Dr. Hale pauses in front of door number eighteen, tapping out a code on the keypad monitor, barely glancing my way as the door pops open with a greeting hiss and a wisp of cool mist. “You've got five minutes,” she says, making another hash mark on her clipboard for reasons I don't even want to speculate about. “Don't expect to be left alone with the body. We don't do that here.”
I figured as much, but I can't resist a pout anyway. This would be a lot easier if I could simply test the body and leave, no witnesses, no awkward question-and-answer sessions. Sighing, I reach into my cleavage and remove the DNA tester from the hollow of my dress, cursing my lack of pockets when Dr. Hale gifts me with a pointed raise of her eyebrows. “Is it breaking some hard and fast rule for me to bring this in?”
Dr. Hale removes the tester from my hands, something in her expression softening slightly as she examines it with a clinical eye from a half-dozen angles. “It's not illegal,” she says. “And this one's issued by the SLB and doesn't appear to have been tampered with. Sure, knock yourself out.”
She hands it back, not bothering to add what's unsaid. The body would have been tested by now, no matter how lacking the autopsy might have been. I can't imagine I'm the first to request another DNA test, though, one taken from the body right in front of my disbelieving eyes.
I wonder if Mom asked for one, too, tested him and got a positive response and then spit on him with a smile on her face.
“Thanks,” I murmur, ducking past her to go inside.
The walls of the crypts are padded and white, the nude body stretched out on the metal table, a strategically folded sheet draped over its hips.
If it's a clone, it's been tagged well, down to the last shiny-skinned burn and ragged scar. The bruises he'd been sporting at the cafe are missing. His defined brow and pointed jawline mark the face as a match, the brows thick and silver with elven angles to them. He looks, as always, like a middle-aged sprite run wild, like some otherworldly prankster escaped from A Midsummer Night's Dream.
It looks like Morris.
Exactly like Morris.
I sway a little, just enough to make me question whether it's just a long day and high-heeled shoes combining to knock off my balance. I grip the cool edge of the table, steadying myself as the room swims in my line of vision. I take a deep breath and there's the sting of formaldehyde, the faint growing rot of dead flesh.
Maybe it's Morris, maybe it's not, but it's definitely dead.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I jam the DNA tester's retractable needle into the corpse's neck.
Technology has updated at an absurd rate while I wiled away my days serving coffee cake and piping hot green tea to small-town folk who've rarely if ever seen a working costumed superhero close up. Sometime while I was gone, they must have perfected the DNA testers to Olympic precision, wirelessly tuned in to the SLB's genetic mainframe and jolted with an extra bit of speed, because as soon as I jab the body with the damn thing, it beeps to alert me to a positive result.
I raise the tester to read the green digital letters as they flash across the undersized screen on the tester's flattened side.
MORRIS KEMP, the readout proclaims, %99.66 accurate.
My breath hitches as I fumble the tester in my shaking fingers, nearly dropping it onto the body.
“Told you,” Dr. Hale says from the hall.
She didn't, and she didn't have to, but the sentiment stands.
All right, I surrender. I officially have no damn clue what the hell is going on.
9.
Once my powers stretch back to life, I give Nate a hasty farewell and teleport back to my apartment, eager to get the hell away from the morgue. Unfortunately it's just a matter of switching up one dead space for another. Five minutes after I get back I'm stomping through the living room grumbling random theories under my breath like some crazy conspiracy nut.
Wonderful. One day dealing with my family and I'm tipping right back into frustrated lunacy.
What I need is a sounding board. I need a completely unbiased person to bounce ideas off of, someone who won't waste time with silly arguments. Someone whose mind whirls with possibilities, and above all someone who can keep their mouth shut
.
I need Troy.
“So what do you think?” I say a half-hour after I teleport to his house and pop him back to my place. I attempt to sound cheerful and helpful but fail miserably. “Got any brilliant writerly ideas?”
Troy refuses to look away from the sloppy set-up on my living room wall as he sits on the floor with his back against the end of the couch and his gangly bare legs stretched out before him. He simply lifts his empty glass and shakes it in my direction once again, the slowly melting ice cubes jingling a musical request my way.
Frowning, I snatch the bottle of scotch from the end table and pour him another drink. “You know I apologized already, right?”
Troy smirks up at me, his face pulled so tight I almost cringe, and says, “Consider it part of my writing process.”
He fixes his attention on the wall once again, nursing the glass of scotch with all of the enthusiasm of a sleepy puppy. It takes me a long moment to summon up the courage to sit beside him on the floor, my fingers still wrapped around the bottle as I rest it on my drawn-up knees. I avoid glancing Troy's way mostly out of guilt, still a bit shy after what I did. I suppose I could have at least given him a warning or asked him if he trusted me or something equally trite before bringing him here, but I have not been having the best day by a long shot, and it's already later at night than I usually tend to stay awake anyway.
At least Troy doesn't appear to have that problem. If he's been wiped out by anything, it's his sudden disappearance from his house and reappearance in my apartment, not to mention the ensuing fumbling and rambling most people wallow in after hitching a ride with me on one of my teleportations. His brown hair sticks up in all directions, twisted wild by Troy's trembling fingers thrusting through the shaggy masses in frustration. Apparently I grabbed him right before he settled in front of his computer for the night, right after he changed into baggy boxers and a gray T-shirt a couple of sizes too big. He must have shrugged on the worn-thin plaid robe to hide his mile-long legs, scrawny and pale, like some stick figure brought to life.
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