She nodded and went off with Kestrel to pay for her new wardrobe.
Fay. She’d been young, innocent, a fellow runaway trying to survive in the unforgiving streets of New York. I’d taken her under my wing, protected her for a short – too short - while. She’d been my first love.
First love. Greatest failure.
New York City, New York, September 23-October 3, 2002
The first three days are a nightmare. I hide in the sewers during the day, enduring the hideous stench and darkness so people won’t see the faceless monster I’ve become. I come out at night, hiding in the shadows while I go out and use some of my cash to buy something to eat. Hiding my deformity takes some ingenuity. I keep my hoodie up over my head, and wear sunglasses I tape in place. I keep looking down and to the sides when I’m close to people, and cover my nonexistent mouth and nose with my hand, pretending to cough and sneeze. Those tricks work surprisingly well – most New Yorkers don’t make eye contact in the first place, and are too busy thinking about themselves to pay attention to a stranger. The few times people notice my featureless head, they mostly scream and run. One store owner shoots me in the ass with a round of birdshot, which hurts like hell but makes me realize I’m bullet-resistant and heal real fast.
Eating takes a lot of work. At first I can’t figure out what to do, having no mouth. I’m starving after the first day. Finally, I press a candy bar onto my face, trying to push it in somehow, and feel the lower part of my head change briefly: a mouth of sorts – it feels like a twisted tear on my skin, lipless, with misshapen teeth behind it – opens long enough for me to shove the candy bar into it and chew and swallow. I can only keep the mouth going for a few seconds at a time, and as soon as I’m done chewing or biting it disappears again. I’m not going to starve to death – not that Neos starve to death in any case – but I still have no face.
On the fourth night things change. I’m watching a TV screen through the bars of a closed storefront. I look at the face of a news anchorman and find myself wishing for his face, for anybody’s face. That’s when I feel flesh and bone moving behind my skin, and next thing I know my reflection on the shop window is wearing the anchorman’s features. I don’t have to hide anymore.
It takes a while to figure out all the ins and outs of my new ability. One of the characters in Aces and Eights is this Neo shapeshifter called Dirty Trick. In reality he is a hideously misshapen dwarf, but he can become movie characters for short periods of time, and he uses that ability to avenge himself on all the people who mistreated him. I’m not as good as Dirty Trick. I can’t change the shape of my body. I can do faces and can alter my skin pigmentation, and that’s about it. But I don’t have to fear the sunlight anymore. I can show my face, someone’s face in public, and nobody needs to know I’m a monster.
That’s one problem down, plenty left to go. It’s still warm out, so sleeping outdoors isn’t a problem, but my money’s running out fast and I’m filthy after a few days sleeping in the rough without showers or laundry. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t run into Fay and her pimp.
Day Seven. I pick someone’s face at random and end up in a bad part of Spanish Harlem. I’m always on the move, never staying in the same neighborhood for more than a day. I’m not sure if I’m looking for something better or just worried about someone finding me. This part of the city is new to me, and that’s all that matters. At least, that’s all that matters until I hear the screams.
A girl is screaming from an alley. I go see what’s going on and that’s when I see Fay for the first time. She’s fifteen or sixteen, short brown hair, pretty. She’s wearing very tight red shorts, a black tank top and ratty sneakers. Bruises mar her face and arms, and she’s cowering from a guy standing over her. The guy is a big Puerto Rican in wife beaters; lots of colorful tattoos cover his muscled arms. He’s yelling at her in Spanish, calling her a stupid whore and telling her to get ready for work or she’s going to be sorry. It’s puta this and puta that, and she cringes as he raises a clenched fist, and something snaps inside my head.
“Hey, pendejo,” I call to him. I learned quite a bit of Spanish from my father before he died; most of it involved insults and obscenities. He turns towards me, face twisted in a sneer. He looks tough and mean, and I smile, because when I see his eyes I finally understand my purpose in life. “Why don’t you try that shit on me? Chupame el bicho, canto de cabron.” Telling him to suck my dick was probably unnecessary, he was pissed enough to come at me anyway, but why not add a little insult to the injuries I’m about to inflict?
It’s not a fight, not any more than it was a fight when my stepfather found himself punching a guy with no face. He pulls out a knife. I catch his wrist on his first slash and break his arm. The look in his face changes; he goes from rage to fear and agony in no time at all, and his scream isn’t all that different from the girl’s. That’s what saves his life. When he starts sniveling like a child in pain, he becomes human in my eyes and I can’t quite bring myself to kill him. I just slap him around until he passes out and throw him in a dumpster with the other garbage.
While I tend to her pimp, the girl just watches. When I drop him in the dumpster, she dives in after him.
“What are you doing?” I ask her while she rummages in the dumpster.
She comes out holding a rolled-up wad of cash. “He owes me.” She looks at the cash, and at me, and gives me a crooked smile. “Halfsies?”
“Uh?”
“Wanna go halfsies on the money?” she starts counting up the cash. I can tell she’s scared I’m going to take it all from her, and that she’s trying to ingratiate herself with me. Her smile gets weaker.
“Halfsies sounds good,” I tell her, and her surprised-happy expression makes me feel great. She hands me half the wad of bills. Well over a grand, I discover after a quick count. She watches me warily, ready to bolt if it turns out I’m going to try to take her half after all.
“I’m gonna get a hotel room and get a shower,” I say after pocketing the money. “Wanna come along?”
She considers her options, and she must have been pretty desperate, because she nods.
We get the hell out of Spanish Harlem, wander around the low-rent parts of the city until we find a cheap motel where the clerk doesn’t ask for ID. The asshole behind the front desk takes one look at us and charges me double the normal day rate, but I don’t give a shit. I’m rich. I buy us some fast food and we hang out in the dingy hotel room and eat and talk.
Her name is Fay Borland. She’s from Nebraska. She says she couldn’t get along with her parents so she left. I never get the full details about what drove her to run away. From the way she talks about her father I can read between the lines. I hope she got out before he started molesting her and not after. She used up all her money getting to New York and Pedro, the guy I just trashed, found her at the Transit Authority, where he’d been trolling for fresh meat. He must have been a lot more charming than when I met him, because she ended up going with him willingly. That had been a week ago. He hadn’t gotten her started on hooking yet, but when he tried to break her in she wouldn’t, so he beat on her a bit. She tried to leave the next day while he was sleeping, but he’d caught her, and that’s when I walked in on them.
I tell her my story, some of it, at least. I don’t show her my real face and never tell her what I really am. There’s only the one bed, and I offer to sleep on the floor, but we end up cuddled up together. She snores softly when she falls asleep next to me. I don’t mind.
For five days it’s good, it’s fucking great, the first good thing that’s happened to me in a long time. We go shopping and act like grown-ups. Why not? We have money. She buys clothes that cover her up as much as possible, and throws the shorts and tank top in the trash. We eat out and walk around and enjoy ourselves. I buy a couple more books and we spend the evenings reading in our room; she’s working on a historical romance; I’m enjoying an old Heinlein classic.
On the third
night the cuddling in bed turns into something else when she reaches for me. I’ve never done it before and I don’t know if it’s fear or trying to be noble that prompts me to ask her if she’s sure she wants to do this, but she says yes and her skin is warm and soft, and what she’s doing feels damn good, and I’m sixteen. I’m clumsy and it’s kind of a mess, but it’s also great and I feel like I’m king of the fucking world.
On the sixth day, Day Thirteen since I left home, she says she wants to go out by herself. We’ve been living in each other’s pockets for days, and I can see how she might want some alone time. We kiss goodbye. She goes one way, I go another, and I spend the day enjoying the sights and trying to figure out our next move. I’ve been paying for everything, letting her hold on to her share of the cash, and I’m down to some three hundred bucks. I have a plan, though. Find another criminal, a dope dealer or a pimp or whatever, beat the crap out of him and steal his cash. Rinse and repeat. We’ll stay in the motel until I can find somebody to make us fake IDs, and then we can do whatever we want. Rent an apartment. Play house. Be normal. I’ve been wearing the same face for over a week, even though it hurts a little, holding on to it all the time. I figure I can stick to it for the rest of my life.
I get back to the motel in the evening, feeling pretty good about everything. I buy her flowers along the way.
Fay is lying on the motel room’s floor, not moving, a hypodermic clutched in her hand, the needle still inside her. My face disappears.
I was too stupid to realize she’d been jonesing badly all along and trying to fight it.
I never noticed the track marks. I’d lived a pretty sheltered life, asshole stepfather aside, and didn’t figure out that Pedro the Pimp had gotten Fay hooked on H during their week together, getting her prepped for her new life. She fought it, but she did it privately. I think she was too ashamed to tell me about it. I was too busy getting laid and feeling happy to know anything was wrong. She fought her own private war, fought bravely and lost, and I never fucking knew about it until the end.
She didn’t know what she was doing. I’m positive that the overdose was accidental, that she just fucked up because she didn’t know what she was doing. It doesn’t take much to turn a high into a one-way trip. She didn’t mean to kill herself. Not that it matters. Dead is dead.
I drop the flowers and make a face to try and revive her but she’s already cold and I’m just doing CPR and mouth to mouth on a corpse. I call 911 and leave her lying on the motel room and walk away.
It takes me a few days to find Pedro the Pimp. He doesn’t survive our second meeting. It doesn’t do any good. She’s still dead.
New York City, New York, March 17, 2013
It took me years to get over it. If I hadn’t met Cassandra, I’d have never gotten over it. Cassandra helped me try to forgive myself. It never quite took, though. Sure, there were plenty of excuses. I’d been young, stupid, inexperienced; there was no way I could have known what she was going through. On some level, it all sounded like bullshit to me. I buried the memories and moved on. Until now, when I realized the way I felt for Christine was a lot like what that romantic teenage imbecile I once was had felt about Fay. That sixteen year old was long gone, and a decade of looking up society’s ass should have cured me of any romantic notions. But there you go; scratch a guy and you’ll find a stupid teenage boy inside.
Whatever this thing with Christine was, it wasn’t going to end up like that. I didn’t care who I had to kill, but she wasn’t going to end up like Fay. If that meant I had to let her go so she could live a normal life, so be it.
Fuck self-pity. Just do whatever it takes so you don’t end up holding the corpse of someone you love again.
The Freedom Legion
Atlantic Headquarters, March 17, 2013
“Okay, we got the crazy son of a bitch. Now we gotta hold on to him,” Daedalus said, looking directly at her.
Ali Fiori couldn’t think of anything to say. She was in charge, now that Doc was dead, but her mind refused to get in gear. Doc Slaughter’s death had left her in a state of shock. Doc had been a constant in her universe for all of her life, and now he was gone. During the battle, there had been no time to dwell on the loss, but now the fact had finally sunk in. She didn’t want to accept it. She especially didn’t want to accept that Doc had been murdered by another friend and mentor. Whether a traitor in the Legion had been involved or not, that fact remained. John had killed Doc.
“In theory, we have to turn him over to the US government,” Daedalus continued. “After all, Ultimate ‘allegedly’ committed two murders and assorted other crimes on US soil. But the feds don’t want to get their hands on this hot potato. They’re perfectly happy to have us hold on to him, and didn’t put up a fight when we flew him back here. We have the most advanced Neo detention facilities on the planet, after all. Nobody’s managed to imprison someone in Ultimate’s league for very long. When he wakes up, I guess we’ll find out how good our facilities are.”
Meteor’s arms were crossed in front of him, his biceps bulging, his whole body tense with anger. “He’s too dangerous to keep around. Bloody hell, mate, we should’ve never taken him alive! It doesn’t matter, does it? He’s for the noose or the axe either way, isn’t he? We should have put him down once and for all.”
Ali snapped out of her stupor. “We still don’t know if John was in his right mind.”
“For fuck’s sake, woman, who’s going to diagnose that crazy wanker? None of our telepaths can get through his thick skull. Maybe Mesmer could’ve, he’s done it before, but...”
“But he’s dead,” Ali interrupted the Brit, glaring at him. Mesmer – Jason Merrill – had been the most accomplished telepath in the Legion. He’d also been Ali’s love of her life, until their nasty breakup – over John, of all things. Jason had died during the attack on Freedom Island, his head blown off by something or other. She’d been quietly mourning him, and all the other dead, and now she had a brand-new shit sandwich to chew on; the hits, they kept on coming. “I know he’s dead, Meteor. I’m the one who found the body.”
“Let’s not get sidetracked,” Daedalus broke in before things blew up, quite possibly literally. “We can’t summarily execute John, so there’s no point bringing it up. He gets a trial – a US law trial – and then we carry out the verdict like good world citizens. The question is what to do in the meanwhile. I suggest we keep the entire Atlantic roster on high alert for the time being.”
Ali nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. I’ll see to it. Do we have an updated status report on our casualties?”
Daedalus glanced at one of the screens in the Situation Room. “Coming up just now, as a matter of fact. Six members still incapacitated, including Nebiru, worse luck. Janus really did a number on him, and our Master Magus ended up temporarily burning out his powers just to stay alive. Looks like he’ll be out of commission for a couple days. Other than those six, and Doc, of course, everyone else made it out of the fight without major injuries. We got lucky.”
Nobody’s that lucky, Ali thought to herself. If John had been out to kill, the body count would have been horrendous. He had applied just enough force to incapacitate his targets - except for Doc. None of this made any sense, which meant things weren’t as they seemed.
Trust no one. Meteor wanted John dead. Was it because of a seventy-year old grudge, or something else? And Daedalus kept trying to take over, subtly undermining her leadership. They were her chief suspects, but she couldn’t let her suspicions show. Someone might try to take her out next.
I’d like to see you try, motherfuckers, she thought. That was just empty bravado, though. Whoever was doing this would have made plans to take anybody out.
“Well, that’s settled,” Ali said. “We’ll keep everyone on high alert, and move all our Atlantic heavyweights into Freedom Island for the time being.”
“Artemis wants reinforcements in the East, though,” Daedalus countered. “Things aren’t going well over there,
either. There was one major skirmish over there already, and plenty of minor ones. Looks like the war is on.”
Ali closed her eyes for a couple of seconds. “Let’s send out everyone who wasn’t in the Ultimate Task Force,” she said. “Let’s face it, only our high Type Twos are going to be any use if John breaks out, and if it comes down to open conflict with the Empire, every warm body we have in-theater will help.”
“Gotcha,” Daedalus said. “I’ll send out marching orders. Might as well send out all the human auxiliaries, too.”
“Sounds like a plan. Maybe a show of force will convince the Emperor he can’t win.”
“The Emperor isn’t intimidated easily,” Meteor countered. “You know the two blokes he actually respects; one’s unconscious in the basement and the other’s in the wind.”
“I know,” Ali admitted. Janus and Ultimate: without them the Legion’s firepower was about three fourths what it normally was. “But we do what we can. The US is sending reinforcements, too, Neo and conventional. It will have to do for now.”
“The sooner this mess is over, the sooner we can deal with the Chief Imp,” Daedalus said. “The US Attorney’s office is working on it. So is John’s lawyer team. I figure we’ll go to trial in ten days or so. After that, we’ll get a verdict in about a week. That means we have to hold on to Ultimate for seventeen days, give or take.”
“As soon as John wakes up, I want to speak with him,” Ali said. “Before he gets deposed. We need to figure out what’s going on.”
“He’s still in a coma,” Daedalus said. “My new zapper did a number on him. It’s a miracle you didn’t kill him, Fiori. When you sucker-punched him his defensive aura was down; you busted him up almost down to the cellular level.”
And he should have recovered in a few hours, no matter how badly he was hurt, she thought. Are you keeping him unconscious, Daedalus? “Well, whenever he wakes up, let me know.”
New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet Page 17