Red and Black

by Nancy O'Toole Meservier

  Because Calypso stood with her back to him, it was impossible for Sully to make out her facial expression. But even if she had been looking at him, dead on, I don’t know if the guy would have picked up on the slight flaring of her nostrils.

  “I know I expect much from you,” Calypso said. “You more so than most. But even with your background, Matthew, I can see why this job went so poorly. There is no way the three of you combined could withstand an attack from someone so…Empowered.”

  Sully nodded.

  “Knew you’d understand.” He gave his captors a dirty look. “Been tellin’ them that for days. If they had just—”

  “Unfortunately, you also abandoned Martha,” Calypso said, her voice suddenly hard. “And that betrayal, I cannot forgive.”

  She turned to face Sully.

  “Matthew O’Sullivan. You, as much as anyone else, understand what a cold world we live in. Society cares little for those who refuse to play into its well-worn plans. And those of us who exist on the outskirts? Well.” She shrugged slightly. “There is only one way for us to survive.”

  “By fightin’ back,” Sully replied with a nod.

  Calypso shook her head.

  “No, it’s by sticking together. By forming a family. Something I thought you understood.”

  “Family.” Sully shook his head. “I…”

  “I’m afraid that’s not an apology I can accept.” Calypso took a step toward him. “You know the consequences. I’m going to have to let you go.”

  Gasps could be heard around the garage. Hell, one of them might have even been from me. The two bouncers that had held Sully looked up at Calypso agape, their charge completely forgotten.

  At least until he lunged for her.

  “What? No!” He struggled against his captors. “I don’t…I—”

  One of the bouncers kicked him in the legs, sending him to his knees. The other one grabbed on to the back of his head, forcing Sully to look upward. Calypso crossed the space between the two of them, then leaned forward until she was cupping his face in her hands. Sully froze, paralyzed, eyes on the floor.

  “Matthew O’Sullivan,” she said, voice whisper-soft. “Look at me.”

  There was no way he could refuse.

  When I was younger, my mother had read to me every night. The practice had gone on for a while, long past the point when I could read myself. Her favorites had been the Greek myths. The stories of Hercules and his labors, of Medusa with her petrifying gaze, and of Calypso, who drew men to her island and never let them go.

  Watching this Calypso made me realize what a kindness that had been.

  I wasn’t blind to this supposed “Age of Heroes” we were living in, with all these Empowered people popping up out of nowhere. I just hadn’t cared. What was the point in losing yourself in stories of superpowered beings who never did shit for you? Who had time to follow their “adventures” as you juggled multiple low-paying jobs that still couldn’t keep up with the mountain of debt that had seemingly piled up overnight? Then, Calypso had shown me what real power was.

  The crazy thing was it only took one look, and one touch. After that, the receiver was completely loyal to her on every level. At first, it was similar to that devotion you might show a really close friend or family member. When the chips were down, you would do anything for them, including breaking a whole bunch of laws. But the longer you were under her spell, the more the devotion became twisted. Calypso wasn’t just your leader; she was your goddess. After just a few weeks, you began to act a little more reckless than usual. After a month or so, you were more than just reckless.

  I called it The Curse. And it was, for all intents and purposes, reversible. Give someone the right touch, the right look, and all those connections to Calypso (or their “Mistress,” as most of her drones called her), were completely gone.

  I had thought this insane. Why set someone free when they had complete knowledge of your headquarters? Who could testify against you? And probably held a hell of a grudge?

  What I didn’t realize is when you devoted every waking breath to someone, worshiped them like a deity, severing that connection tended to make the act of breathing unbearable.

  Calypso’s eyes met Sully’s, and for a moment, her pale-green irises intensified. I could have sworn that they glowed, just for half a second. Then, she turned away, her shoulders slightly slumped.

  Sully collapsed to the floor, all his frustration and defiance gone. After a few seconds, the two bouncers practically had to drag him away. All I could think about was how the last woman Calypso had let go had killed herself in under twenty-four hours. Sully seemed to be made of tougher stuff, but did that even matter? Would he ever be able to get over losing his connection to Calypso?

  “Faultline?”

  I straightened up to my full height at the sound of Calypso’s voice, once again distant and whisper-soft.

  “Yes, Calypso,” I replied.

  “Arthur Hamilton,” she said, attention back on the board. “We will send someone to take care of the extraction, but as for the job itself…My people won’t be able to stand up to this costumed girl. I need someone with your abilities.”

  “Ah…yeah. Sure, sure.” My gaze drifted to the back of the garage. Sully was almost to the hallway.

  “Faultline?”

  I felt a hand on my arm. I stiffened slightly, then turned my head, lingering over her short, ragged fingernails. It almost looked like Calypso had gnawed on them, hard as it was to imagine.

  “Did that upset you?” she asked with a frown.

  I paused and swallowed.

  Put it away…

  “I’m fine,” I said, my voice steady once more.

  Calypso gave me a long look before finally replying, “Good.”

  She turned back to the Smart Board in front of her, on the layout of the building. The description beneath explained that it was Arthur Hamilton’s office.

  Kidnapping. That would be a new one for me. My short time with Calypso had mostly consisted of smacking around small-time gang members or anyone else who stood in her way. This felt different. Real different.

  “You know that’s what I value the most about you, isn’t it?” Calypso said. “Your ability to think clearly.”

  I paused and glared down at my hands. I flexed my fingers in and out.

  “I always assumed…”

  “Yes, that’s part of it as well. But, as you can see, there are drawbacks to the use of my gaze. The fact that you are immune shields you from such drawbacks.”

  I nodded. She had told me, weeks ago, that certain people were resistant to her abilities. Apparently, I was one of them. She had never explained why.

  “You are able to think clearly when others cannot,” she said. “And that is something I need more than soldiers.”

  She paused, turning back to the Smart Board.

  “So, is there anything I need to know about this guy?” I asked, sensing that the topic was closed. “Is he special in any way?”

  Calypso ducked her head.

  “I suppose he is.”

  4

  Dawn

  Rule #3 on my “how to not screw up being a Costume” list: Don’t forget to feed the cat.

  It was around seven-thirty by the time I arrived home, having caught supper in Bailey U’s surprisingly not-crappy dining hall. I had forgone the rooftop-jumping method for the tram, figuring that providing a clear path to my house while costumed up wasn’t something I should be in the habit of doing during daylight hours. So plainclothes and public transportation was the way to go.

  Bailey City is divided into three sections by the Bailey River, which runs directly down its center then forks into two branches about a third of the way down. The universities, commercial district, and the Coastline area (including all the trendy restaurants and shops), are mostly located in the middle section, although they do bleed out to the east and the west the farther down you get. The eastern and western parts of the city are more, b
ut not entirely, residential. The western side is known for being…a little worn down.

  And while everyone on the eastern side of the river isn’t “check out my spare helicopter” rich, we’re certainly better off.

  And yes, I was crossing over to the east side of the river.

  A lot of people assumed that our money came from my mother’s writing career. She did spend an awful lot of time on the bestseller list, after all. But the truth was, we were “that” type of well-off. Not self-made, but inherited from my father’s family. And as someone who went to schools surrounded by similar people, it had taken me embarrassingly long to realize that the east side of the river was not normal. Normal didn’t include trust funds. Normal didn’t come with million-dollar waterfront vacation homes. Normal was more like Sunshine, whose hippie artist parents depended mainly on loans and scholarships to pay the $50,000 a year, including room and board Bailey U tuition.

  I wasn’t Tony Stark rich, but I wasn’t normal, either.

  I opened the front door with my keys, which I shoved into my pocket after I re-locked the door behind me. The building was three stories high, but the bottom was mostly the garage where my mother’s car was being stored. She was off on a monthlong book tour, an event that certain…recent incidents had almost convinced her to blow off.

  I took the staircase up to the top, which led to the rest of the house.

  I emerged into a spacious living room that took up much of the front half of the building. Tall, skinny windows gave me a clear view of the river at twilight. I headed to the kitchen in the back, ducking under the sink and pulling out a large bag of cat food. The cabinet door slammed shut. Immediately, I heard the pitter-patter of adorable feet.

  “Lockheed,” I cooed as a brown tabby cat made his way into the kitchen, his rounded middle jiggling to the rhythm of his gait. Hmmmm, maybe I shouldn’t be all that diligent about feeding him. He opened his mouth and let out the tiniest of meows, and I instantly felt my heart melt. Before I knew it, I was giving the little guy an extra helping in his food dish. I know, I know, bad idea and all. But he was just so cute!

  Leaving Lockheed to his dinner, I made my way up to the third floor, where three bedrooms could be found alongside the second bathroom.

  I breezed past my brother Alan’s old room, which had been transformed into a guest room/place to store unfolded laundry since he had moved to Boston a couple years back. My mom’s door was cracked open, allowing Lockheed access to his favorite window, the one right next to the bird feeder.

  The first thing that grabbed my attention as I entered my own room was my collection of framed posters, arranged between those narrow windows. There was one featuring the X-Men back during Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing, a movie poster for Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (which I’ve always secretly enjoyed more than The Dark Knight), and a solo shot of Kamala Kahn as Ms. Marvel. The frames made the fact that I still plastered my walls in posters look less childish. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

  I headed toward the walk-in closet in the back. After kicking off my flats and hanging up my sweater, I pushed my way to the back until I came across one of those shorter long boxes that people use for storing issues of comic books. Picking it up took some effort. It was heavier than it looked, and I could only access my enhanced strength—as well as the rest of my powers—while costumed-up. I brought it over to my desk, moving a pile of textbooks to the side. I opened the box to reveal what appeared to be a large stack of trade paperbacks that I swore I was going to sell or give away sometime soon. The truth was, there was only a handful of books inside (mostly an old X-23 run which, although worth reading, was kind of unfocused). In a move that always makes me feel kind of like a spy, I pushed them aside to reveal a false bottom that hid a police scanner and a red spiral-bound notebook.

  I took out both and turned on the scanner (because what else is a twenty-year-old girl gonna do on a Wednesday night?), tuning it until the right station came up. As the fuzzy voices of the BCPD came through, I pulled out a pen for the notebook. Archaic, I know, but after two weeks of taking notes on the completely hackable laptop that I toted to and from school pretty much every day of the week, I decided that keeping things old-school was a good way to start off. It was hard to install a high-tech bat-cave when you still lived with your mom.

  The chatter on the police scanner was relatively benign, which wasn’t uncommon. Bailey City isn’t exactly Gotham. Crime exists, but not on the same level as, say, Boston or New York City. That, and I didn’t see the point of me crashing every domestic dispute or “drunk guy causing problems in the park” call. Minutes passed, and I soon found my attention wavering to the other big responsibility in the room. The pile of textbooks on my desk.

  Ah, homework.

  Rule #4 was to keep my grades up, at least until I graduated. I had always been a good student, albeit not on the same level as my brother, so it would look strange if my usual collection of As began to slip downward. My goal for this semester was to not only keep up, but stay ahead, so I didn’t get in one of those “Gee whiz, I have a history paper due tomorrow but there’s a dangerous weather machine in the sewers! What do I choose?” moments. As a result, I was all prepared for tomorrow and Friday, but I had a short history paper due on Monday, and it needed work.

  Of course, I could just do that when I got home. Take one of my routes around the city and be back by nine. I’d have plenty of time to get ahead.

  After all, it was likely to be a slow night.

  I can’t really explain what it feels like to jump from rooftop to rooftop.

  It’s easy to think of it like flying, your hair whipping back and wind in your face as you ascend. Then, you arc in the air and begin to fall, gravity pulling you toward your destination. There’s a strange element of uncertainty when this happens. Will you hit your mark, or will you overshoot, missing the top of a skyscraper in the process? And then, before you can properly think it through, your feet are on the ground, then you’re up again.

  The experience is so all-encompassing that you can forget why you’re up there in the first place.

  And then I saw Marty Tong.

  I stumbled a bit as I landed on top of an office building on the corner of Birch and Seventh Street, not far from Northwest Comics. After the whole incident with Dana Peterson, it had been impossible not to wonder what was going on with Marty.

  So I stalked him—for the good of the city, of course.

  From what I’d seen, his nightly antics hadn’t involved anything more nefarious than bar-hopping. Marty would party it up for hours, which made me super impressed at his ability to show up for his morning classes (ironically, he wasn’t one to skip). But now, instead of drunkenly stumbling out of some trendy place on the Coastline, he was coming out of Colossus Fitness, a new gym that had popped up back in the spring.

  I recognized who he was talking to right away: Noel White, a white guy with an almost adolescent gawkiness to him. He was tall and lanky, with a mass of curly brown hair that grew from his head in an awkward poof. He had a large nose, big hands and feet, and a noticeable Adam’s apple. We had a class together, English Novel, where the two of us held an unspoken competition for who could be more silent and awkward during discussion time.

  I couldn’t think of anyone less likely to spend his free time with big-mouthed Marty.

  Even with that big mouth of his, I couldn’t make out their conversation as they spoke in front of the gym. Marty seemed awfully excited, though, his hands moving in all different directions. Noel nodded in response.

  Then, a black sedan pulled up to the curb, and the two jumped in without hesitation. I shook my head and turned to leave. Why spend another night waiting outside of some bar? I paused. What if this wasn’t an Uber driver? What if this car was like the white van? What if they were going back for Dana?

  As the vehicle pulled away, I decided to follow it, launching myself off the roof I was standing on, then landing across the
way down the street. The mental map I had formed during all my practice sessions sprang up in my mind. I knew this area well enough that making my way from building to building only took about half of my attention. The other half remained on the sedan as it snaked through the various numbered and tree-themed streets.

  The car didn’t turn onto Maple Ave., which would eventually lead them west of the river, where Dana lived. I felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. The mystery would continue, but at least Dana wouldn’t have to fulfill the damsel-in-distress role for the second time in a week.

  Then the car pulled into a parking garage connected to the Commerce Center, the tallest building in Bailey City. The fact that the building stood at only fifty stories tall should give you a good idea of what passes for skyscrapers here. Still, the views were pretty impressive, located near the peak of where the Bailey River forked into the two smaller tributaries. The top story housed a restaurant and bar, famous throughout the city for charging four-star prices to clueless tourists for subpar food.

  Only, the restaurant and viewing deck were closed for renovations. It had been on the news. What were Marty and Noel doing there? The rest of the building was filled with offices that were likely to be empty by 8:30 PM on a Wednesday night, save for people who were really dedicated to their jobs. I guess they could just be looking for an overpriced parking spot?

  I circled around to the side of the garage and landed on the top of a concrete wall. Not being Spiderman, it was a challenge, my gloved hands struggling to find purchase. I looked up, concerned that I had given myself away—only to see Marty and Noel walking through the automatic doors that led into the Commerce Center.

  Crap. I couldn’t let them out of my sight! It would be way too easy to lose them in there.