by Dunne, Lexie
Tabitha’s smile grew strained at the edges. “In you go. The Reusabital should be wearing off now, which is good. We don’t believe in any restraints, medical or otherwise, in this complex.”
“In prison,” I said, tone never changing.
Tabitha chuckled, like I’d said something extremely amusing. “Enjoy your nap.”
I put my palm on the little panel beside the door and watched it slide open. Apparently, Detmer worked just like Davenport. There was probably some irony in there somewhere.
With Tabitha gone, the world seemed a little less plastic. My thoughts began to connect in logical fashion once again as I stepped into my cell. I was in prison. I wasn’t supposed to be in prison. I was in my room in Detmer, which was actually like some kind of demonic day spa, and Angélica—
My breath hitched as everything finally broke. Every emotion under the sun slammed into me at once: fury at the injustice, grief so sharp that it felt like it was cutting into every exposed inch of my skin, confusion and anger and sadness. My hands began to shake. I clenched them into fists, but it didn’t help. Everything built and built, the pressure growing behind my temples until it finally happened: I screamed.
I screamed and I kept screaming even though my throat felt raw and ripped to shreds. What felt like hours ago to me, I’d had everything: I’d been happy, shopping for new clothes at the mall with friends. And now, I was in prison for a crime committed by an actual supervillain, and every time I tried to point that out, they drugged me. My friend was dead because of a hit she’d taken for me. The scream went on and on until I couldn’t breathe. I dropped to my knees and hiccuped as tears spilled. I finally did what the drug had been keeping me from doing: I broke down and sobbed.
At some point, I must have crawled over to the bunk beds along the wall and climbed onto the bottom bunk. My eyes were swollen from crying, and my throat ached, as I stared at the underside of the bunk above me.
I was in prison.
I didn’t even know Chelsea, the woman they’d claimed I had helped kill Angélica. We’d met a grand total of twice, and both times, she’d been doing her damndest to kill me. Unluckily for her, I’d had a run-in with a mad scientist who had dosed me with some kind of super-element. The Mobium in my body made me faster and stronger, quicker to heal, and more perceptive. It sped up my metabolism to frightening levels, which was why my stomach currently felt like it was trying to digest itself. But the most important thing it had done had been to enable me to survive Chelsea’s powers, which was why the first time she’d tried to kill me (in a bank, while I’d been trying to meet with a journalist associate of mine), she had been unsuccessful.
The second time, my superhero trainer had knocked me out of the way, and Chelsea had unloaded a full blast into her. I’d watched Angélica seize and die in a hospital bed while I’d been fighting off my own injuries and unable to help her.
I rolled over onto my side and felt another set of hot tears leak out of my eyes.
Why did Davenport believe I knew Chelsea? Why would they ever think I would do anything to Angélica? I liked her. Sure, she’d spent most of our acquaintance attempting to put me on the floor, but she had been genuine and kind, and fiercely hilarious. A tear dripped onto the bridge of my nose and onto the feather pillow under my head.
“Do you plan on knocking that off anytime soon?”
I flailed, which was a mistake because pain exploded up and down my side. Angélica’s lessons kicked in: in an instant I was halfway across the room, on the balls of my feet with my hands held in loose fists in front of me.
The woman who’d spoken, who had to be seventy if she was a day, stared at me, utterly unimpressed. She found me so uninspiring that I almost wanted to apologize for my very existence. She leaned one shoulder against the wall and raised a single silver eyebrow.
“Who are you?” I asked, wiping at the tears so they wouldn’t hamper my vision.
“Your new roommate. I’m tired of listening to you snivel.” With surprising spryness for a seventy-year-old, she crossed over and pulled herself easily onto the top bunk. Her legs dangled over the side. “Name’s Rita.”
I eyed her warily for a second. The sniveling comment had made my ears burn, but I didn’t see the point in alienating my roommate right away. “Gail,” I said. “I’m Gail.”
“You smell like fresh meat.” Rita actually sniffed the air. “Hell, you’re still shiny. What’d they get you for?”
I swallowed hard. “They say I helped kill somebody.”
“Only helped? Underachiever, I see.”
“Yeah, thank you for your opinion,” I said. “I’ll cherish it always.”
Rita tilted her head and considered me. It didn’t escape my notice that she hadn’t volunteered what she’d done to get her locked up. “So that’s how it’s going to be,” she said.
“How what’s going to be?”
Rita hopped down off of the bed, landing lightly on the toes of her orthopedic sneakers. She wore an outfit similar to mine. What her arms lacked in tattoos, they made up for in sheer muscle tone. She was only a little taller than me, and her skin was sun-worn and withered like an old nut. But her eyes were bright and hard.
I tightened my fists as the hair rose on the back of my spine. Every sense tingled.
“Hurt yourself, did you?” she asked instead of answering my question. “You’re leaning a little.”
I raised my chin. “What’s it to you?”
“Looks like you hurt yourself right here,” she said, and delivered a short, sharp-knuckled punch to the side of my rib cage.
I immediately dropped to one knee with my hand over my abdomen, air hissing between my teeth. I hadn’t even seen her move. “What the hell was that for?”
“You’re new,” she said, leaning over and twisting her head so she could meet my eye. I had to bite down hard on every instinct I’d ever possessed, all of which were screaming at me to lunge at her face and blind her. Angélica had warned me time and again not to attack in anger. Rita might be old, but she was fast, and she was strong. “You seem stubborn, which means you probably won’t learn quickly. That’s fine. The only one you’re hurting is yourself.”
“What is your problem?”
Rita’s smile was so cold, it dropped the ambient temperature a couple of degrees. “With you? There is no problem. But there are rules here, and you will follow them. As my new cellmate, you represent me.” She grabbed my chin hard enough that I swear I heard my jaw creak. “You will not embarrass me, child.”
I hissed out a breath. “Screw you, old bat.”
Nothing changed behind those flat blue eyes. “Oh, you’re precious. I should—”
I punched her. Because I was in pain and still a little dizzy, it wasn’t the precise, devastating punch Angélica would have wanted, but I struck Rita’s wrist, knocking her hand away from my chin. I dropped onto my elbow to try and spin and kick her legs out from under her. She leapt nimbly out of the way. Though I expected her to kick me in the abdomen, where I was vulnerable, she did something else entirely: she started clapping.
“So you do have some fight in you,” she said, bringing her hands together hard enough that the sound hurt my ears. It felt like an explosion in the tiny white space of our cell. “Good.”
I climbed to my feet. “Stay away from me. I’m innocent, but that doesn’t mean I’m taking any crap from you.”
“We’re going to have so much fun together.” She toyed with the hem of her shirt for a second, and I noticed that all of us had DETMER stamped on the bottom of our shirts, as if we would ever forget where we were. She inclined her head like a queen dismissing her subject and strolled right out of the room.
I stared after her. Great. I’d been wrongfully thrown in prison, my friend was dead, and my roommate was a psychopath. When was this nightmare going to end? And could it get any worse?
When he removed the silver helmet he’d always worn, I realized I’d gotten something very wrong about Razor X: she was not a dude. Strawberry blonde hair spilled over her shoulders. The bug eyes looked even creepier without her helmet.
She reached up and knocked on the door. I stumbled back until I was pressed up against the wall. All of my old enemies were in this prison, and the only thing between them and me, I realized with a horrible feeling of dread, was a glass door.
“Crap, crap, crap, crap,” I said under my breath, like a mantra. She couldn’t get in, but I felt like a zoo creature, trapped in the room while she stared. I took a deep breath, gave her my best glare, and went to sit on the bed. Surprise crossed her face (maybe; it was hard to tell with the huge yellow eyes) before she shrugged and walked away.
I put my head down and stared at my own lap, at the black pants and the edge of my shirt, with my name on the bottom hem. GODWIN stared back at me. No longer Hostage Girl, Girl, or Gail. Now I was going by my last name.
Rita’s shirt had said DETMER in the same place.
I’d assumed that it had been the name of the prison. It was, but I had forgotten one fact: Kurt Davenport, founder of Davenport Industries and the original Raptor himself, had built Detmer Prison. He’d named it after his wife, the very first prisoner.
His wife Rita Detmer.
My cellmate wasn’t just any random supervillain.
My cellmate was the very first supervillain.
I was rooming with Fearless herself.
I stared at the wall. I stared at the ceiling. I thought about Angélica, and about Chelsea, and that weird secretive council chamber. About stripping naked in front of a complete stranger and having my scars cataloged like library books. How I was in prison with at least fifty people who had ample reason to hate me. How I couldn’t stay in my room forever, not with the way my stomach was beginning to hurt from lack of food.
Thinking about that, I did the only thing I could: I crawled under the covers, pulled them over my head, and stayed there, shaking, until I fell asleep.
CHAPTER TWO
Hunger woke me.
Sometime during the nap, it had migrated from being a pressing concern to an outright distraction. The minute I opened my eyes, my stomach growled. My hands trembled. I could feel my vision blurring, which only made me feel sicker. Angélica had warned me about what would happen if I didn’t take care of my incredibly fast metabolism. My body required fuel to fight off leukemia, which was a side effect of the Mobium. I wasn’t allowed to ever let it get this bad. I needed to eat, or I would become incredibly ill.
But eating meant walking to the dining room that Perky Tabitha had pointed out. Beyond the door to my cell lay at least fifty sources of highly individualized terror.
“You’re strong now,” I told myself as I fumbled my way out of bed and to the door. It didn’t do a thing to stop my knees from shaking. “You can take them. You’re not Hostage Girl anymore.”
My hand hovered by the panel. I watched my fingertips quiver and bit my lip hard.
If Angélica were there, she would have made some mocking comment, or called me something insulting in Portuguese. I could practically hear her voice right then and there, so strong that I had to squeeze my eyes shut. I took a deep breath and pushed the button. The door slid open, inviting a gust of lavender-scented air.
The hallway beyond my room was empty, which made sense when I leaned back to check the schedule. Dinner had been going on for a solid twenty minutes, so I would be walking into a meal already well in session.
I’d survived high school. I knew what that meant. It couldn’t be helped, though. If I didn’t eat, the bruised ribs and throat wouldn’t heal, and my condition would only worsen.
At least the Mobium ensured I would be able to find the dining room again. After a lifetime of forever getting lost, being able to find a place as long as I’d been there already was a godsend. As I walked off to enjoy what could possibly be my last meal, I worried. Prison food was supposed to be the worst of the worst, wasn’t it?
I smelled lobster thermidor before I even reached the dining room.
“Good evening, mademoiselle.” A tuxedoed man stepped in my path and made a little bow. “If you would be so kind as to follow me, please?”
Well, he didn’t look like any supervillain I’d ever faced. Taking a deep breath, I followed him into the dining room, which was lit by candlelight. Placing open flame around the world’s most dangerous supervillains seemed like a prodigiously bad idea to me, but I did have to admit it was really pretty with the way it flickered and reflected off the snowy white tablecloths. Seated at the tables were several people I recognized and quite a few I didn’t. Their casual Detmer uniforms seemed out of place with the silver dishes and fancy centerpieces, but I couldn’t deny that the food was what drew my attention. Lobster thermidor, a beef dish that smelled positively delectable, and something done with cod that made me salivate. Waiters whisked about with dome-covered platters, bowing obsequiously.
I felt the atmosphere in the room change as I followed the maître d’. Villains at various tables turned their faces to follow me. The candlelight made their eyes seem beady and calculating.
Halfway across the room, the inevitable happened: one of them recognized me.
Venus von Trapp practically leapt out of her seat. It had been a couple years since she’d snatched me out of Union Station, and she no longer wore her lily-pad couture, but I recognized her right away. I flexed my wrists automatically. She’d once suspended me eighty feet in the air with the help of a few giant vines.
“Hostage Girl?” she asked, her eyes so wide, I could see her unnatural red irises clearly even in the low light. “Dionaea muscipula, is that you?”
“I don’t go by that anymore,” I said, sneaking looks at the other diner at her table. My stomach sank farther when I saw the fangs of the pale woman sitting next to her abandoned seat.
“Don’t tell me you’ve joined the corps mal,” Venus said, shaking her head, so that the vines and leaves that made up her hair clattered against each other.
“With the trash they let in?” I said. “Not damn likely.”
It occurred to me that sassing the woman who’d once turned me green for two weeks was a bad plan. But Venus waved an impatient hand and turned to the maître d’. “She’ll sit with us, Pierre.”
“Very good, madam.” He whisked himself away, leaving me in the den of my enemies. Literally, it appeared.
“You were always the easiest way to get a good dime in here,” Venus said, and my jaw dropped open a little. “It was like the best-kept secret. But if you’re in here now, guess we’ll have to find some other way.”
“Hostage Girl’s been off-limits for nearly a year, Ven,” Lady Danger said. Without her Victorian dress, she seemed like an entirely different person. But she still had the beehive hairdo. Luckily, she did not have the genetically modified Great Danes on either side of her chair (I checked). “Hello, Girl. You’re looking well.”
I didn’t tell her to go to hell though it was a very near thing.
“Have a seat. They’ll bring out the first course for you. You’re a little behind, but no worries. Do be sure to try the beef.”
I sat only because it was growing too painful to stand. “Hold it,” I said as I reached for the bread basket and began tearing a roll to pieces. “You all wanted to come to Detmer? That’s why you were always kidnapping me?”
“Well, yes.” Lady Danger passed me the butter. “You were our favorite, too. You did make things so much easier for us, dear.”
Venus nodded enthusiastically. “And Blaze was never cruel about taking people down. I always thought you were rather cute together. How’s he doing?”
“You turned me green,” I said, the words finally exploding out of me.
Venus paused with her wineglass hovering from one of her hair-vines. “Yes,” she said, like she wasn’t sure why I would be upset. “And wasn’t the photosynthesis great? I keep trying to convince Lady D to give it a shot, but alas, no luck. Did you not like it? And I tried to get Blaze’s shade just right. I thought you would appreciate that supportive little touch.”
Photosynthesis had not, in fact, been all that great, and being able to understand plants had been even worse. I hadn’t been able to eat a salad for over a year without feeling like a cannibal. Even worse had been the fact that the Domino had gleefully turned their entire page green in my honor. Lady Danger gave me a sympathetic look as though she understood how I felt completely and did not actually find the idea of communing with plants all that interesting herself. The last thing I wanted was sympathy from a woman who’d attacked me with giant, terrifying dogs.
So I pushed my palm into my forehead as a waitress brought over another breadbasket, a menu, and a wineglass for me. “What the hell is going on? What is even happening?”
“Dinner,” Lady Danger said. “It happens every day. Today’s is actually exceptionally good. I really must send my compliments to the chef.”
“No—not dinner.” I picked up the menu and stared angrily at it, as though I could channel all of my frustration into it. If I could, it probably would have spontaneously combusted, and I would never have known that the fourth course was blackened fish tacos with tropical fruit salad and chipotle lime corn relish. Those sounded really good, actually. I focused past the hunger. “Not dinner,” I said again. “This whole place. Detmer. You guys are supervillains.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Venus said. “I mean, it’s a compliment, but really we’re lower tier at best, and—”