by James Maxey
I shook my head. What was wrong with me? I’d decided that death was preferable to life, but still couldn’t help but worry that people would think less of me if my suicide note lacked the proper gravitas. When the Lawful Legion had found me at Reverend Rifle’s ranch and captured me, Golden Victory had given me a stern lecture telling me I should reexamine my priorities. Maybe he was more right that I’d admitted at the time.
I trudged up the sandy path in the moonlight. The lights of “my” trailer come into view. I say “my” with a certain uncertainty because, technically, the trailer belonged to Jenny Sanchez, the person I believed I was when I left the Butterfly House. Jenny Sanchez was a good kid, the daughter of immigrants who’d tried to make a home for themselves in their new country by serving in the military. Her father had died rescuing children from a bombed building in Afghanistan; her mother had perished when the cargo plane she was flying was shot down over Syria. That Jenny had been raised by an uncle who died when caught in the crossfire between two rival drug gangs.
This had been my uncle’s mobile home. It still had bullet holes in the aluminum shell. When I look at them, I feel something stir within me, a craving for justice. The falseness of this feeling angers me. It also angers me that I possess clear memories of playing on the swing set in the backyard as a child. The swing set had been rickety, the metal legs not fastened to the ground, and more than once I’d almost turned it over with a particularly high swing. I remembered the rush of air on my face, the way the metal chains bit into my palms, the sensation of flying. It’s a good memory. One of my best memories.
And it never happened. My real childhood had taken place in Amarillo, Texas. My true father had been a banker and he wasn’t an immigrant. My father’s family tree can be traced back to Florida in the early 1600s, when his ancestor came over from Spain. My dad boasts my family members have been Americans since before there was an America. My mother had been a secretary at my father’s bank, but gave up her career and stayed home to raise me.
My mother’s still alive, by the way, living in a big house in the Houston suburbs, all alone. I looked up her address using Legion resources, and have studied her roof and her yard perhaps a dozen times on Google Earth. I’ve never made any attempt to contact her. My picture had been all over television following Cut Up Girl’s press conference, where I’d revealed myself as a member of the Lawful Legion’s covert team. Did my mother ever realize that the woman on television was her daughter? If so, I hope it hurt her that I never reached out to her. In some ways, I hate her more than I hate my father. She chose her husband over her daughter. She’d turned a blind eye—
I stopped short of the trailer, grabbing the sides of my head with my hands, squeezing hard as I clenched my eyes tightly, trying to break free of the memory of how my mother had called me a liar, had called me crazy, had said I needed to keep my mouth shut.
With this thought, my anger and pain suddenly found relief in grim humor. I gave an involuntary smile. I hated my superpower, but it seemed almost poetic that a girl told so often to keep quiet would develop a power based around screaming.
It might sound strange that I was smiling so soon after wanting to kill myself. But my mental pain is like a tide, it ebbs and flows. Sometimes I’m certain it will drown me, but often it gets drained away by the tug of daily events, trivial things like wondering where I’ve put my car keys, and not so trivial things like the disappearance of the moon. But my pain never completely disappears, any more than the tides can empty the ocean. Still, when the waves are calm, I feel like I might yet swim to safety.
I walked to the metal steps leading up to the back door of the trailer. The trailer dated from the sixties, a weathered, beaten aluminum box that might have been blue years ago but is now a dingy gray. It looked like it would blow over in the slightest breeze, but it’s survived numerous hurricanes, and stands as a reminder that things that look broken on the surface might hide a stronger frame. I reached for the doorknob, then stopped. The kitchen light was on.
Had I left the kitchen light on?
I hadn’t. If I could trust my memories of the last few hours, I’d turned out all the lights. No point in contributing to global warming if it took people a few days to find my body. Seriously, I’d thought about that. Who knows? Perhaps that virtuous, do-gooder instinct is a remnant of government programming, like my goofy handwriting.
For half a second, I knew it was Harry. Harry had come back! My heart felt like it would beat its way through my boney ribs. It had to be Harry. Who else would have keys? Then I remembered I hadn’t bothered to lock up.
Still, it might be Harry. But it wasn’t going to be Harry. The same God who’d decided that a quiet girl should turn into a screamer would probably appreciate the irony of having me murdered by an intruder on the same day I’d written a suicide note. I had enemies. It wasn’t just my mother who’d seen my face on TV. In my brief career with the Legion, I’d helped take down drug lords in the Port City pulse trade. I’d wondered how long it would be before they sent someone to take their revenge.
I rolled my eyes at the stupidity of my paranoia. An assassin wouldn’t turn on the lights. Unless they were terrible at their jobs, which was certainly possible. In my time undercover with the drug gangs, the vast majority of gangsters I’d encountered had been dumb as bricks.
I pulled the pistol from my pants and slipped the clip back into place. Carefully, quietly, I opened the backdoor. I stepped inside. The floor creaked. Figuring whoever was waiting for me now knew I was home I grasped the pistol with both hands and flattened myself against the wall.
“That you, Jenny?” a woman asked from the living room. Her voice was familiar, but for some reason, I couldn’t place it. She didn’t sound hostile, but I kept the gun in front of me as I stepped around the corner. I took aim at a young woman with long, flowing, red hair sitting on my couch. She wore bright pink lipstick, gaudy, fake-looking lashes and garishly long fingernails. She wore a short, tight, red dress, like she was on her way to a party.
The typewriter was on the coffee table in front of her. She was holding my suicide note in her hand.
“You change your mind?” she asked. “Or am I keeping you from something important?”
Chapter Three
Welcome to the Lawful Legion
Harry’s Story
Valentine came close, rose to her tiptoes, and threw her arms around my neck. She put her lips right against my ear and whispered, in the softest voice she could manage, “Valentine is dead. At least the old Valentine. When you last saw me, you knew me as Echo. I know the bastards killed the old me. Can I count on you to help me prove it? Even if it’s just the two of us against the entire Lawful Legion?”
“Even if it’s just the two of us against the world,” I whispered back.
Echo kissed me. It was heavenly, all I’d dreamed of, the gleam in her eyes as she’d drawn close, the heat of her skin, the taste of her mouth, so perfect, so absolutely perfect. And her smell! My chimp senses pick up things a normal human nose would miss, and in addition to the floral scent of her hair and perfume, I caught every tone of her sweat, all the aroma of her breath, and filled my lungs with pheromones that hit my bloodstream like the most euphoria inducing drug ever invented. And I just fucking stood there, like my lips were paralyzed, not returning the kiss at all. I managed to lift my arms to embrace her, but awkwardly, the way you might hug an overly friendly long-lost relative.
It took Echo about five seconds to grasp that she was doing all the work, kiss-wise. She drew back, running her hands across my chest, her eyes fixed on mine. “What’s wrong? Did I take you by surprise? You really didn’t know I felt this way about you?”
“I, uh, well… I mean, Valentine, um, I knew she liked me, but…”
“Don’t talk about her like she was another person,” said Echo. “I’m Valentine.”
“You just said you were Echo!”
“Shhh,” she said, putting her finger on my lips. “Do
n’t blow my cover.”
“Right,” I whispered.
“And, anyway, it’s not a cover,” said Echo. “I really am Valentine. I had exactly the same life she did. I was part of her. I was your best friend at the Butterfly House. I fought beside you with the Red Line. It was me who went out to dinner all those late nights at the Panda Inn and talked about our crazy lives until the sun came up. I didn’t split off from Valentine until she broke up with Bobby, and by then you weren’t really part of her day to day life anymore. In every way that matters, I’m the girl you’ve known. And I love you, Harry. I’ve loved you ever since the Butterfly House. The old Valentine was an idiot not to tell you years ago.”
“You just said you were Valentine during that time.”
“Fine. I was an idiot. I’m comfortable saying that. I’m even more comfortable telling you I’ve wised up. You’ve been my best friend for forever, but fate conspired to keep us ever from telling each other our true feelings. We were meant to be, Harry. Don’t deny it.”
“I’m not denying it,” I said. “But… but I watched you die. I held you… I held Valentine in my arms while her life slipped away. For you to show up now and—”
“I know that had to be horrible,” said Echo. “And I’m not asking you to forget her. But, back at the Butterfly House, before we escaped, I had this weird conversation with Brain Boy where he tried to explain to me that, because there were infinite parallel universes, in some of them it was inevitable that a person could survive every close call, and in effect be immortal. I’m the Valentine that escaped this close call. It’s like the universe has shaped itself to ensure we’ll be together at last.”
“Wow,” I said. I hadn’t thought about Brain Boy in years. Invoking his name at this moment didn’t stir any feelings of romance, and instead made me remember the horrible way he’d died because I’d been dumb enough to help him try to escape.
Echo could sense the shift in my mood.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just… this is a lot to take in. I mean, I just got back, and haven’t even seen Jenny—”
“Oh God,” she said, shaking her head. “Jenny. Of course you can’t admit you love me. You still have feelings for Jenny.”
“Where is Jenny? Is she here?”
“Back in Florida, I think. I’ve heard she’s on a medical leave. I haven’t tried to make contact.”
“Why not? I mean, she knows the truth about the Butterfly House. If you really are on a mission to expose the old guard of the Lawful Legion as being part of a conspiracy to kidnap and brainwash super-powered kids, you’re going to need her help.”
“I don’t trust her,” said Echo. “She’s always struck me as a little… unstable.”
“Man,” I said, rubbing my eyes. Valentine’s life had been a complete train wreck until her final weeks. For Echo to judge Jenny as unstable was breathtaking. On the other hand… “Look, I’m not even going to pretend you’re wrong about that. Jenny has been through some bad shit, so, sure, she can be a little erratic. But if emotional stability is an important quality in an ally, I’m not sure you’ll want my help.”
“Harry, you’re like a rock. You’re the most stable person I’ve ever known.”
“How few people can you possibly know?” I asked, my forehead wrinkling. “In the time you’ve known me I’ve had, what, six different superhero identities?”
“Five by my count,” she said. “So what? You’re young. You’re still finding yourself. That doesn’t change the fact that you handle everything life throws at you with courage and humor. You’re a fighter. I’m a fighter. The Valentine I split off of sort of gave up, got lost in the booze and surrendered to being a loser. That’s why I left her to make my own life. You’re ability to keep fighting no matter what life throws at you inspired me.”
“First of all, Val stopped drinking months ago,” I said. “Second, you may be overestimating how much craziness I can endure without breaking. I can’t even begin to explain to you everything I’ve been through in the last few weeks. I mean, I had to survive in the jungle. I ate monkeys.”
“Monkeys?” she asked.
I nodded. “I did what I had to survive. After almost being killed by, you know, dinosaurs. Robotic ones. Oh, and I haven’t even told you the craziest thing. I finally met my mother.”
“You met Dr. Moreau?”
“Yeah. She’s dead now.”
“You killed her?”
“No, a gorilla girl named Sasha killed her. Sasha was kind of in love with me—”
“In love with you?” Echo frowned. “Why? Just because you look kind of like a gorilla she thought you’d love her back? There’s more to love than looks, Harry.”
“I know.”
“Oh my God, you slept with her?” asked Echo.
“What on earth did I say that makes you think that?”
“It was the way you said ‘I know.’”
I laughed, but even to my ears, my laugh sounded like a confession. “Is this some superpower all women have? Deducing men’s secrets from the simplest utterances? ‘Cause Jenny is really good at it too.”
“So you did sleep with her.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“You’re in love with her?”
“Oh Lord, no. She was straight up crazy.”
“But you still slept with her?”
“Didn’t we have this exact conversation with our roles reversed when you were sleeping with Chopper?”
Echo winced. “Right. Sorry.”
“I didn’t love Sasha and wouldn’t sleep with her again, even if that were an option.”
“Why isn’t it an option?”
“She died about two minutes after the last time we were together so—”
Echo’s eyes grew large.
“Not from the sex!” I said. “I mean, it was pretty violent, but… never mind. Not important. All I’m saying is that right now, at this exact second, I don’t have a clue what to think or say or even feel. I’m exhausted on a level I can’t possibly explain. I need to sleep. I need a shower. I need to brush my fucking teeth.”
“I was going to say,” said Echo, sticking out her tongue and making a face. “I’d been dreaming about that kiss a long time, so I wasn’t going to say anything, but what the hell have you been eating?”
“Bugs, raw meat, and rotting fruit,” I explained. “And, as previously noted, at least one monkey. Sorry if my breath isn’t minty fresh.”
“Don’t apologize,” she said, stroking my cheek with her delicate fingers. “I’d kiss you no matter what your breath smelled like. You might not know what to think and feel, but I do. Harry, you’re my best friend, but I don’t want to live in that friend zone even one more day. I’ve had time to think; I’ve had time to discover myself. I know my heart. You are part of my heart. If you need time to process that, I totally understand, but I know, as sure as I know the sun will rise tomorrow, that you love me too.”
Her eyes met mine and I saw myself reflected in them. I felt as if I was staring into her soul and finding myself there. I leaned down, my lips parting as she turned her mouth to meet mine.
An inch before our lips met, an alarm went off. I pulled back, startled, as the lights began to flash.
“What now?” I asked.
“Get to the hangar!” Golden Victory shouted as he flew into the room. “Sterngeist just stole the moon!” He flashed back out in to the hallway with a whoosh, zooming off to do whatever it is that you do when the moon is stolen.
“Welcome to the Lawful Legion,” I said as Echo looked at me in confusion. “I wonder if I’ll have time for a shower before we get onto the spaceship?”
“You won’t be getting onto the ship,” said a gruff, gravelly voice directly behind me. Echo stepped backward as she spotted the person who’d crept up behind me.
“Howdy, Retaliator,” I said, not bothering to turn around. I’ve heard that Retaliator doesn’t actually have any
superpowers, but I’ve always wondered if he has some sort of ghost tech. With my animal senses, I’m not easy to sneak up on, but he always takes me by surprise.
“What the hell is a bigger problem than the moon being stolen?” asked Echo, not looking directly at Retaliator. He’s kind of uncomfortable to look at, in his skintight leather pants and gimp mask. He always looks like he just walked out of some bondage dungeon. She said, “I mean, we did just hear Golden Victory say that, right? It wasn’t my ears playing tricks.”
“Someone’s playing tricks all right,” said Retaliator, pressing his gloved fist into his palm, cracking his knuckles.
Echo laughed. “Wow. I didn’t know you guys had a sense of humor. You totally got me.”
“I mean that the Prime Mover is playing tricks,” said Retaliator. “At the exact second the moon vanished the Fourth Horsemen was spotted flying toward San Diego. There’s a nuclear submarine at port for maintenance. This won’t be the first time the Prime Mover has tried to get his hands on a nuke. It can’t be coincidence that the Fourth Horseman was in play the second this distraction with the moon came up. The Prime Mover has to be behind this.”
“You think it’s a hoax?” I asked. “The moon wasn’t stolen?”
“No. The moon did vanish,” he said. “The base’s seismographs confirmed it. But, it’s back now. Supposedly, aliens are holding it ransom, but that’s something our teammates will have to tackle. Protecting the nukes on that submarine needs to be our priority.”
“I’ll respectfully disagree,” said a gray haired man in a dark blue uniform who blinked out of thin air into the room in front of me. “A stolen nuke might take out a city. A stolen moon could bring humanity to extinction. Our priority is clear. Fortunately, I’ve found the probable location of Sterngeist’s ship.”