by Drew Hayes
“If Tori is my civilian self, does that mean villain me needs a code name?”
“Eventually,” Ivan said. “For now, Apprentice will do just fine.”
Chapter 6
Tori wasn’t sure how she felt about the pantsuit. Granted, the dark color paired well with her blue shirt, and the whole outfit wore quite well on her—Doctor Mechaniacal had clearly had it tailored—but the overall look wasn’t the issue at stake. What bothered Tori was how the suit made her feel. It was like she was wearing a symbol of selling out, of giving up on her dreams of success and independence. She was going to work a shitty temp job, the very fate she’d bucked against by trying to make her own way in the world. This suit was mundaneness made physical, and it made her skin crawl when she thought about it for too long.
All that made the act of wearing it bearable was the knowledge that it was an act, a costume to protect her true identity. This was her mask; this was the facade that would keep her safe. If the strategy could work for someone like Fornax, then surely it could be effective for her. Besides, it wasn’t like she had any choice in the matter.
With one last glance in her mirror, Tori stepped out of the bathroom and left her garage apartment on a course for the main house. Ivan had made it clear that tardiness was completely unacceptable. She wasn’t sure that she’d keep heeling to his orders, but the relationship was a bit too fresh to push the boundaries already. Promptness wasn’t an excessive demand, anyway, especially since she was supposed to be catching a ride with the boss.
Ivan was waiting when she entered the house, a crisp suit, white shirt, and crimson tie adorning his body. He handed her a bagel and a napkin before they’d even exchanged greetings. “Eat in the car. We need to get to HR in time to fill out your extra paperwork.”
Tori cocked an eyebrow even as she accepted the breakfast and followed him out the front door. “I thought all of that was taken care of?”
“All the things that could be handled by others were,” Ivan explained. He got into his car, checking his mirrors and buckling his seatbelt. Tori slid into the passenger seat and waited for the ride to start. Instead, she found Ivan staring at her, an impatient, pinched expression on his face.
“What?”
“I’m waiting for you to buckle your seatbelt.”
“Seriously? You know I turn into fire reactively when something hits me, right? A car crash won’t do jack.”
Ivan drummed his fingers against the steering wheel but made no other motion to begin the drive. After a few moments of meeting his gaze, Tori reached up, grabbed the belt, and pushed it into its holder. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” Ivan turned the keys and pulled out of his driveway. “As I was saying, the forms that could be done were. However, due to our special circumstances, we have to go in personally to fill out extra forms with HR.”
“Is this a guild thing?” Tori asked her question through a mouth muffled by a big bite of bagel.
“This is a corporate thing. Since you and I are ostensibly family; your hiring would constitute nepotism if I were the one to orchestrate it. Even working together has the potential to be misconstrued. That’s why we’ll be signing documents allowing the company to intervene if there are complaints about the quality of your work and me not keeping you on task.”
“Almost sounds like working under you puts a target on my back,” Tori noted.
Ivan nodded. “In a way it does. You’ll have to work harder to prove yourself than someone else in your position would, go above and beyond to show that you deserve to be there.”
Tori finished off the last of her bagel, then brushed the crumbs off her pants. Ivan didn’t wince as he saw them tumble to the floor of his well-maintained car, but only barely. “So, not only do I have to work a day job, I have to do it while people are muttering shit about me behind my back. Gee, thanks again for getting me this swell position, Teacher.”
“I’m not thrilled about this either, but it was the only way to explain your residence at my home and our daily carpooling. If we’d tried to hide the connection that Doctor Mechaniacal established, it would have raised people’s suspicions. That is the very opposite of what we are attempting to do.” Ivan paused at a light and motioned for another car, merging illegally, to go ahead.
“Yeah, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that,” Tori said. “While I appreciate how much you all have done for me, I would like to make a return trip to my place at some point. There’s some tech I’d like to recover, along with my clothes and my motorcycle.”
“Your ‘place’ has already been emptied out and your possessions cataloged,” Ivan replied, twisting the wheel to turn them down a narrow street.
“What? But how?”
“Standard protocol for new members. Everything that you’ve stolen and could be traced back to you, including your motorcycle, was either dumped or destroyed. The rest is put away safely into storage for when you earn a place of your own. Individual items can be removed by filling out request forms, though they don’t often make exceptions for trainees. You aren’t supposed to be that comfortable, after all.”
Tori turned and looked out the window, watching the gray office buildings roll by as they entered the eastern part of downtown. They were so bland and boring, like a corporate version of Ivan’s neighborhood. Soon, she would be one of the suit-wearing dots filtering through these places. A wave of nausea tried to rise up in her stomach again, but Tori forced it down. She had been through so much worse than this, and the opportunity in front of her wasn’t one she felt inclined to let go of. Tori Rivas could smile and nod as needed, so long as she spent the rest of her time forging the new life being offered to her.
“There’s a picture of me with both my parents. We’re at a park, and it’s in a faded gold frame. Any chance they’d let me have it?”
“Ordinarily, probably not,” Ivan said. He drove slowly through the security gate, nodding at the guard on duty while a camera scanned the sticker in his windshield, and then pulled into his assigned parking space. “But I’ve got a little bit of clout around the guild. Do your best today, and I’ll see what I can manage.”
Tori nodded; she’d never expected a request to be fulfilled for free. That wasn’t the sort of relationship she and Ivan had. In a way, though, it was comforting. She knew the stakes with him. There was no subterfuge or trickery. It was all there, out in the open, which made dealing with him far simpler than with most criminals.
With one last glance out the window, Tori unbuckled her seatbelt and left the car. The dull brown building loomed before her as a river of peons trickled into its glassy mouth of a door. Ivan began moving forward, and she followed suit. It was her turn to be devoured by this place, and she had to do all she could to make sure it didn’t spit her back out.
* * *
The Alliance of Heroic Champions didn’t have a council—or at least didn’t call what they had a council, because councils (according to their PR department) tended to conjure up negative imagery associated with shadowy ruling criminals. Instead, they referred to their oversight committee as the Champions’ Congress. Unlike in the villains’ guild, those on the Congress were not selected by the various groups as representatives. Instead, the three who sat on it were either founding members or appointees who had been chosen by exiting members and ratified by the other two. At least, that’s how the replacement system would work in theory. Since none of the original three had formally renounced their positions yet, it was still an untested method.
Fortunately for all involved, the Champions’ Congress was only needed for major changes or decisions. The lesser tasks of running the AHC were appropriated to various subcommittees, which held elections every two years. On the same day that Tori was going in for her first day of work, the head of the New Acquisitions subcommittee was walking down a well-lit hallway with a thick folder under his muscular arm. Apollo wore no sleeves; he favored a sleeveless golden breastplate that paired with his armored kilt and sandals.
They shone nearly as brightly as the blond curly locks atop his head, a wonderful accentuation to his blue eyes and perfect smile. There was a reason he had been chosen to head the New Acquisitions subcommittee for three elections in a row—the man knew how to turn on the charm when courting unsigned meta-humans.
He walked cheerfully up the hallway, enjoying the sunshine beaming through the clear windows. The AHC’s base occupied a large block of drab city streets, but the sprawling compound was outfitted with artificial terrains to fit all walks of life, even those not originating from earth. For Apollo, all he needed was the sun. The shard of divinity he’d inadvertently taken from his namesake, the sun god of legend, reacted each time the light hit him. He felt suffused with power and strength, as though he were truly invincible. Apollo had been on the job long enough to know this wasn’t the case, but he still enjoyed the feeling nonetheless.
As he arrived at his destination, Apollo gave three crisp knocks against the wooden door before him. It was unassuming, impossible to differentiate from any of the other offices throughout this floor, because the man inside simply refused to see his position as something that elevated him above the others. While the other two members of the Champions’ Congress liked to work remotely or in private quarters when they actually came to base, Quorum viewed himself as one of the people. Well, perhaps not as one of them, but certainly not as being any better.
“Come in.” The voice from behind the door was firm but friendly. Apollo opened the door to find Quorum typing on his computer. He wore a simple collared shirt and jeans, his usual attire when not functioning in an official capacity, and motioned for Apollo to have a seat.
“Good morning, sir,” Apollo said as he carefully settled into one of the gray chairs with which Quorum and all the others had stocked their offices.
“Good morning to you, Apollo.” Quorum looked at the younger superhero with a warm smile while his left hand continued typing away at the computer. Multi-tasking was just one of his many talents. “What brings you by this morning?”
“We’ve gotten wind of a confluence.” Apollo set the folder on Quorum’s desk; Quorum pulled the folder over and flipped it open with his free hand.
“All magical, astrological, and technological signs point to one striking within the next week or so,” Quorum said, quickly interpreting the data before him. “If you don’t mind, I’ll hang on to this and see if I can’t narrow down the window a bit.”
“Of course, sir. We have plenty of copies already; that one is for you.”
“Excellent. I’ll alert Lodestar and Professor Quantum about this, but I trust you are already putting procedures in place,” Quorum said. He continued to look at the folder’s pages while his hand clacked away at the keyboard. This multi-pronged focus was disconcerting to watch at first, but over time, everyone more or less got used to it.
“We’re doubling down on patrols for the next two weeks, as well as putting key people in every hospital, police station, and public area. When the new metas pop up, we’ll be there to shake their hand, tell them it’s going to be okay, and offer them an application.”
“Wonderful work as always,” Quorum said. “You’re really going all out to prove how much you want that seat.”
“It’s just me doing my duty,” Apollo said, working as hard as he could to keep his voice humble, though only marginally succeeding.
“Please keep it up. Trust me when I say your efforts are not going unnoticed.” Quorum flipped through a few more of the pages on his desk. “Also, let’s call a meeting for this afternoon. By then, I may have gotten a better idea of when the confluence will strike. The more precise a timeframe we have, the better a chance we’re given to help the people dealing with such confusing new circumstances.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself, sir,” Apollo replied. That was true, whether he meant it to be or not; Apollo wouldn’t have been able to keep himself from adding a snide comment to the tail of the statement, however. Quorum might be after these new metas out of pure altruism, but there were many others in the AHC who had different motives.
Most important among them: getting to the new metas before that damn villains’ guild did.
* * *
“This is your cubicle,” Ivan told Tori, gesturing to the small desk with gray felt walls running along the sides which separated it from the identical desks on either side. “There are many like it, but this one is yours.”
“Does that usually get a laugh?” Tori asked. She set down the stack of papers that HR had given her, idly noting that all her cube came with was a computer and a filing cabinet.
“You’d be surprised. Some people around here think of me as the office cut-up.” Ivan’s face was stoic as always, his tone as flat as a forgotten soda. “I’ll leave you here to get settled in and started on your paperwork, which HR needs to have from you by lunch. After that, we’ll have a quick meeting about what your daily schedule should be for this first week as you get your feet wet.”
Tori ogled the stack of papers before her, eyes going wide at how much reading and signature scrawling she’d have to do in order to have it complete by lunchtime. “And what are you going to be doing while I work on all this?”
“My job, obviously.” Ivan extended his arm and checked his watch, making a small clucking sound with his tongue when he saw the time. “I’m already five minutes late for a morning meeting, in fact. I’ll swing by here at eleven, sharp, to take you to drop off your paperwork and show you where the cafeteria is. Please be ready by then.”
Without another word, Ivan was heading down the dull carpet under the florescent lights toward some meeting that Tori imagined would make her brain try to eat its way out from the inside if she had to sit through it. Then she looked at the stack of papers on her desk again, and suddenly an escaping, toothy brain didn’t seem like such a terrible scenario.
“Hey there,” said a new voice from beside her. Tori leaned back to find herself looking at a young man, roughly around her age, with oversized glasses and a shock of bright red hair. “You must be the new administrative assistant. I’m Donald, part of the programming department.”
He offered his hand, which Tori accepted and shook. “Tori Rivas. It’s nice to meet you, Donald.”
“You too,” he replied. “And don’t worry too much about Mr. Gerhardt. He seems scary, but as long as you get your work done, he’s actually really nice.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tori said, giving her cubicle-mate a professional smile. After a few moments of debate, she decided that since they’d gone to all the trouble of creating and telling HR her backstory, she should probably at least try to sell it a bit. “Actually, I already know Mr. Gerhardt pretty well. He’s my father’s second cousin; they’ve always been so close that he was like an uncle to me.”
Donald’s already wide eyes grew several sizes larger as he took in the news. “Oh, wow! No wonder you got such a large starter stack from HR.”
“Yeah, I got here on my own, but then was put in his department, so, you know, rules are rules.” Tori patted the stack of documents, which she could swear was growing every time she looked away, just for added emphasis.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Donald told her. “Mr. Gerhardt has a reputation for being fair. I can’t imagine anyone will accuse him of giving you special treatment unless he actually does.” Donald’s pale skin grew suddenly flushed, especially the tips of his freckled ears. “Wait, sorry, I didn’t mean to say that—”
“Don’t worry, I got what you meant,” Tori assured him. After weeks of dealing with the guild and years of being around crooks, she found it oddly endearing to see someone so worried about hurting her feelings. “And trust me, Uncle Ivan isn’t going to take it easy on me. If anything, I’m on thinner ice than anyone here.”
“In that case, maybe I should leave you alone so you can knock out all that HR paperwork.” Donald glanced at the massive stack of papers on her desk; even with his years of co
rporate drudgery, he couldn’t help but blanch at the sight.
“Sadly, I think you’re right.” Tori started to turn back to her desk but then paused. Much as it pained her to admit it, she’d barely understood half the lingo thrown about in the HR meeting. If all the papers demanded was a series of signatures, then she would be fine, but some of the pages seemed to have a lot of blanks, the sort she would be expected to put more than a name in. Much as she enjoyed being independently capable, Tori was not so prideful that she couldn’t see the benefit in receiving help when stuck in an unfamiliar land. Besides, if Ivan had put her in a situation where she’d be facing unfriendly forces, it was best to accrue allies as quickly as possible.
“Hey, Donald, this is my first time working for such an... organized company. If I hit anything in this stack that I need clarification on, would you mind if I asked you for help?”
“Not at all,” Donald said, a sheepish grin stretching across his face. “After all, we grunts have to look out for each other.”
Tori wasn’t sure how she felt about the “grunt” classification, but Donald’s sentiment was exactly what she’d been hoping for. With a little luck, a bit of guidance, and all of her wit, Tori felt like she might just be able to fake it through a whole day of her charade.
* * *
Ivan had just made it into his office when he saw the shadow in the corner of the room. His eyes narrowed, and he readied himself for an attack. As a member in good standing of the guild, and one of the seven councilors at that, there was no official reason he would have to fear being jumped. But when one dealt with villains, it was always best to assume a power grab or unexpected grudge could lead to assassination attempts at any given time. It had happened before, though the poor bastards that had come to Ivan’s home that night had learned how little patience he had for his sleep being interrupted.