Heroine Addiction

by Matarese, Jennifer

  I shift my weight from one foot to the other, waiting as patiently as I can manage.

  A moment later, the light beside the door clicks on, a dazzling if perhaps not very welcoming shade of red.

  “Here we go,” I say, and leap.

  In the next instant I'm standing, albeit anxiously and ready to leap again at the slightest provocation, on the small squat porch to Morris's lair. A quick bit of rummaging in my cleavage removes the key from its hiding place, and after a fast and dirty mental debate on the merits of simply walking into a confirmed supervillain's lair using the key to the front door, I throw caution to the wind, jam the key in the lock, and turn it before I can change my mind.

  It opens just as easily as my own front door would have.

  My mood brightens considerably when an arrow doesn't immediately fly directly at my head. Once bitten, a few dozen times shy, even after a long sabbatical.

  The exterior of the building fools me, just for a moment. Even knowing what this place must be, it's difficult not to imagine due to its shoddy outward appearance that I'll be walking into a backwoods mansion of wood paneling and orange linoleum, something nearly retro enough for my own tastes if the outside of the trailer didn't hint that the inside would look like a minor disaster area. Luckily, my brain jerks to a start before I can kick myself, presumably hauled awake by the familiar punch-bright glow of computer screens and the greeting hum of white noise emanating from inside the opened door.

  Sure enough, I cautiously enter to discover walls of advanced holographic computer displays and a multitude of shelves crammed with scientific laboratory equipment. However he managed to accomplish it all by his lonesome – and it would have been a solitary endeavor, no doubt; Morris prefers to work alone in every aspect of his villainy – Morris found a way to clear out the contents of the trailer and scrub away any evidence it might have once been contained patchy plaid furniture and elderly taupe kitchen appliances. He painted the walls an austere dark blue, set up an impressive mosaic of computer monitors on the front of the trailer, and replaced the kitchen with a fully-equipped (if rather cramped) laboratory. Everything in the place suffers under the grating harshness of fluorescent lighting, save the perfectly normal bedroom that still appears to be tucked behind the door at the far end.

  I frown as I shut the door securely behind me. Morris had done one hell of a job building the place, I have to grudgingly admit, even if the compact interior gives it the air of some amateur mad scientist's haphazard basement set-up.

  The other villains won't let him join in any of their reindeer games anymore if they ever see this place, I think to myself.

  I rifle through a cluttered stack of schematics on a table and try not to remind myself that the other villains won't be inviting him to do much of anything anymore.

  “How wonderful of you to visit, my dear.”

  I flinch and nearly drop the crumpled blueprint in my hand at the drawling voice, so achingly familiar I swear I'm mistaking it. I whirl towards the wall of monitors only to confront a paneled composite of Morris's face, scar-free but his just the same. I would know that smug smile anywhere. It's a shame it's not really a recording of Morris, or him broadcasting from some far-off place. No matter how rusty I may be, I'm still good at spotting an avatar for an artificial intelligence, it turns out.

  “Pity it isn't for a social call, is it?” he says. He almost sounds sad.

  I cross my arms. “There's something astoundingly creepy about creating your AI in your own image.”

  He shrugs onscreen, his answering smile completely unapologetic. “Some people enjoy talking to themselves.”

  “Some people enjoy invading Guam with mutated sharks in their spare time,” I point out. Morris's adorable little foibles aren't quite as adorable as he believes they are, even in digital form.

  “My, aren't we feisty today? Someone's corset pulled a little too tight?”

  “I can't imagine why I might be in a mood when I'm standing in a highly illegal lair that shouldn't even exist.”

  “You needn't worry yourself, Vera. Although I suspect the fact that you've finally shown your pretty face here doesn't bode well for my creator's current state of health. You're not going to teleport me into the ocean and gleefully watch this entire trailer sink to the ocean floor, are you? Because you should know just how many nuclear devices I'm hiding in my bathroom –”

  “I'm not going to destroy your stupid lair,” I say, sounding far more petty and childish than I intended. I toy with the black casing of a disassembled device I can't identify lying on a nearby lab station, something that appears in its current state frighteningly like a pile of smashed syringes. The metal alloy casing is the only part left intact. I put it back down again, avoiding the jagged pieces.

  You know what? I don't want to know.

  The AI watches me with suspicious eyes, his gaze following my every movement. I'd like to say he looks intimidated by my very presence, but I must be doing something wrong, because if I had to guess his expression wavers between relief and pride. Leave it to Morris to create artificial intelligence that knows just how amazing it is.

  He clasps his hands together onscreen and asks, “So what exactly are you planning to do on this little excursion, if I might ask?”

  Good question. “I'm thinking,” I say, stating the obvious after a long moment of contemplation where nothing comes to mind.

  “Your thinking doesn't include anything explosive, does it?”

  I shoot the monitors a wry look. “You're awfully antsy for someone made in Morris's image.”

  “You'll forgive me if I have my reasons for paranoia.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  A loud whump echoes from outside, and the image of Morris on the computer monitors skips and jags, the digital version of a flinch.

  “Bedroom,” he orders.

  I don't even give myself a chance to question him. I vanish into thin air just as something pounds an insistent thump against the front door.

  I reappear in the dimly lit bedroom of the trailer right behind the barely cracked door, a slim sliver of the outer room visible through the available opening. It's tempting to pull it open a bit wider, but my hands don't even touch the dark wood before the front door slams open. It smacks against the wall with a loud bang, making me flinch even though I'd been expecting it.

  Dad glares at it as he stomps inside, knocking freshly cut grass from the boots of his uniform.

  I only have a second to contemplate how he must have dodged Morris's security and why he hasn't already started destroying the place from the moment he walked inside. As soon as I jump, Morris's AI doppleganger vanishes from the monitors, and the room is dim by the time Dad fully enters, as casual as a hunter coming home after a long day in winter, toeing off his boots, removing his mask with an annoyed rub of his face with the back of his hand.

  I hold my breath.

  He's been here before. Whoever this is – not my father, it can't possibly be – has been here before, and he's gotten comfortable.

  He's not Morris, that's for damn sure. He's far too inelegant for that.

  Is that what he left the party for? To come here?

  He settles in, pulls up a rolling desk chair, makes sure to tuck his cape under him just so the wheels won't roll over it and leave dark wheel scuffs on the material. It's a well-practiced move, a little habit heroes and villains alike develop not long out of school. I file the information away for safekeeping. Whoever he is, he's either a hero in his own right or spent a lot of time around superheroes and paid very close attention to their habits.

  He pulls up to the desk and begins to tap at the keyboard in deft knowing combinations. When nothing happens, his typing grows more frustrated and impatient, and he grumbles under his breath.

  I stifle a sigh of relief, and thank Morris – wherever he might be – for constructing an AI just as temperamental and stubborn as he can be.

  Dad finally leans away from the de
sk and lazily spins the chair with one foot tipping back and forth on the heel. He reaches out with one gloved hand and raises it above a pen on the desk. His fingers dance in mid-air, tugging invisible strings that pull the pen up, up, around and around in a trembling pinwheel.

  A moment later, it drops with a clatter.

  It suddenly strikes me just how heavily Dad's breathing from that simple elementary parlor trick, with all of the ragged road-roughened exhales of a man who's just run a marathon. Whoever this is, he hasn't quite gotten the hang of Dad's telekinetic abilities yet. Which I presume explains when he doesn't appear to know I'm here. On the list of his strengths, Dad's telepathy remained a struggle, while his telekinesis took years of practice and his mind control came to him so easily he'd been able to do it as soon as he'd grown a brain in the womb.

  It's a terrifying thought, that Dad's impersonator might have mastered his ability to control minds already. I press my lips together in a dark frown, trying not to dwell on it.

  My gaze darts around the bedroom, desperate for more clues, more help. Whoever this is can't possibly have slept in the neatly made twin bed, too small for anyone over the age of twelve to comfortably occupy and decorated in an incongruous pairing of Transformers sheets and a She-Ra comforter. It doesn't fit with the rest of the place in an oddly charming sort of way, as if Morris gave the trailer a villainous overhaul only to suppose at the last minute that sleeping arrangements, however pitiful, might come in handy eventually, and perhaps he should keep the bed meant for the child of the previous inhabitant, along with the faded garage-sale linens.

  The rest of the room is decorated in paranoia chic, the walls papered with surveillance photographs and SLB shipping invoices annotated with Morris's delicate handwriting. I wonder with more than a little sarcasm if perhaps Morris has gone legit and sold his considerable secrets to the feds, but I don't get much of a chance to ponder just how ridiculous a notion that might be.

  If the suspicious behavior of Morris's AI is anything to go by, he knows full well who the person inhabiting Dad's body might be. Morris is a thorough villain who likes to know his enemies. He would have done his research when setting up this hidden lair, especially if he were worried about some ambitious hero coming after himself, my dad, or – grudgingly, I must admit – me.

  Morris didn't get to be one of the most notorious villains on the planet by not being thorough when it comes to paperwork.

  Paperwork. Hard copies.

  If Morris expected me to come here, he would have saved copies of anything he thought might be significant, and not just on the hard drive of his advanced database. My grasp on computers is not quite as broad as Morris's. I'm lucky if I can handle searching for plus-sized silk stockings and finding the occasional bit of erotic fanfiction without making my hard drive explode.

  Morris would save me a file. As much as it shames me to admit so, I know him well enough to expect to find something in this room meant solely for me.

  I give the bedroom a cursory glance, spotting a short wooden chest of drawers at the end of the bed. It's a cheap chipboard bureau small enough for a child and covered in peeling brown wood-print paper. Anyone else would dismiss it as just another left-behind hunk of junk, probably picked up for free off the same curbside as the rest of the furniture.

  But Morris's AI knew me.

  Correction. Morris's AI expected me.

  I glance around the room again, and an unseen weight sinks in my stomach. A bed, a chest, an inexpensive bookshelf bought at some big-box store and crammed with secondhand copies of classic novels. Graham didn't read, and he didn't live near here. He wouldn't be stopping by, and he certainly wouldn't need a place to sleep, much less on a twin bed too short for his enormous frame.

  Morris made me a spare room.

  In his villain's lair.

  Well, this isn't awkward, I think wryly.

  That said, the overstuffed bookshelves would be a good place to start looking, but if Morris wanted me to stay, the bureau would be even better. Whatever Morris hoped for when he carted this hideous furniture inside, it more than likely involved making me pancakes after I stayed the night and watched terrible horror movies with him and Dad like at some odd Halloween party.

  Teleporting to the bureau so as not to draw attention with the clack of my heels on the floor, I crouch down and gently pull out the top drawer. No, nothing there. Nothing in the middle drawer, either. But the bottom drawer holds exactly what I expected to find, a thin manila folder with only a few sheets of paper inside.

  I rise up again out of that uncomfortable crouch and rifle quickly through the papers in the folder. Each is a list of superheroes and villains – Dad's closest associates, the family's former employees, even a few distant cousins I've only met once or twice. They're all possible suspects, Morris's tight scrawl noting those with more to gain than others.

  The last list is of simple geography, heroes and villains who live the closest to not only the Noble family penthouse and Dad and Morris's condo, but the lair as well. What doesn't surprise me about the list is that my name is first, no exceptions made no matter how much Morris may like or trust me.

  What does surprise me is that directly under my name, the words Lampwick, Troy stare out at me in silent greeting.

  My jaw drops open, and I make a small soft sigh I don't stifle quite quickly enough.

  I'm sure I just imagine the audible snap of Dad's head jerking towards the sound of me, startled out of complacency by the muted rustling of a hidden someone in the bedroom. What I'm not sure of is what happens next. The frenetic noise of him rushing towards the bedroom and tumbling chairs in his wake fades from my ears as I teleport home on a jolt of pure instinct, the folder still clutched tightly in my hand.

  I'm still teetering on my heels in the center of my living room when I finally realize that I'm safe, or as safe as can be expected with my father only a few short miles away. I should be more afraid that he may show up here, that he'll have the intestinal fortitude to attempt to confront me in my own damn apartment, but if whoever has taken hold of his body couldn't sense me when I was a mere ten feet away, I can't imagine they have a firm enough grasp on his powers to attempt confronting me at all right now.

  I should be safe. For now, at least.

  Unfortunately, that still leaves me one major problem to worry about.

  “Troy's a superhero?” I whisper.

  Well, I'll be damned.

  15.

  A few hours of stewing in my own juices later, I'm mad enough to spit nails and piss acid, as Nate would so eloquently put it.

  I thought that distracting myself with my notes on this whole confusing affair would help me simmer down after the swell of grating annoyance I felt upon leaving the lair. Somewhere between Morris and Troy both lying to me, I reappeared in my apartment horribly tempted to head straight for the kitchen and throw every piece of dishware I owned at the nearest wall.

  Instead, I popped directly into the middle of the living room in front of my scattershot notes like some sort of sign.

  First thing that comes to mind, I thought to myself. Write it down, worry about the details later.

  I stared at the wall for what felt like forever, the words blurring together. Finally, my jaw set in a stubborn line, I snatched a black Sharpie from the side table and crossed out the 'WHO IS DAD?' list with a large deliberate X. Then I scribbled one word underneath it all and tossed the pen aside before I could even think about blacking it out.

  BODYSWAPPING glared out at me in silent accusation.

  Now that I've had some time to let the possibility sink in, it makes a painfully obvious sort of sense. So obvious, in fact, that my rage boiled right back up again as though I'd never even attempted to stifle it.

  I can't decide if the low sound I can't seem to stop myself from making is the result of the stresses of the last couple of days or the aggravations I can already see unfurling before me in my near future.

  The fact is I have absolut
ely no evidence that somebody swapped bodies with my father. I can't take my spontaneous guess to the officials at the Superhero Licensing Bureau and get them to investigate instead. They prefer hard evidence for obvious reasons, and even if whoever is currently occupying my dad's body has even a minimal grasp of his powers, it's still more than enough to keep anyone who might go rifling through his brain in a search for an unwanted squatter from finding them all that easily. The SLB has dozens of powerful mentalists on their payroll, but none of them come close to approaching Dad's level of power. I've seen them in the same room with my dad. Most of them can't stop fawning over him or asking for his autograph long enough to take peeks behind his mental curtain.

  That leaves me with only a hunch. It won't exactly hold up in a court of law.

  Well, unless you're precognitive, which I most certainly am not.

  And you know what? I can't very well keep my family at arm's length the way I have and figure out what in heaven's name is going on. I feel like I've been waiting for the answer to who killed Morris and what's wrong with my father to tumble into my lap. At the rate I'm going, I might as well just make some tea, curl up on my couch, and watch reruns of Animal Channel documentaries until I trip over all of the answers I need, presumably during a trip to the bathroom. I sure as hell feel like that's what I've been subconsciously wishing would happen.

  I huff out an angry breath and flop down on the couch, my arms crossing in preparation for a good old-fashioned sulk.

  It's not that I hate my family. I love them, I do. I just don't particularly like any of them that much. Fate sticks you with people it expects you to happily tolerate until you drop dead, and if you're lucky they might even turn out to be enjoyable company. Nobody in my family considers themselves all that lucky. The theory is that we get along a lot better when none of us live in the same house, city, state, galaxy, and possibly not even the same dimension of reality as one another, and by God, we're going to keep living apart and not speaking to one another as long as that theory pans out.