“Why? Because he still hasn’t fucked me?”
Marian shrugs. “Yes, that’s basically it.”
“Well, fuck him.”
Marian sighs. “Jools, I’m surprised you aren’t more sex positive.”
“I am sex positive. I’m triple sex positive with sprinkles. But there’s this word, Marian: ‘consent.’ You might have heard of it.”
“Oh, you’ll consent, Jools. You’ll be gagging for it. That’s Robin’s gift.”
“It’s not a gift, it’s mind rape, and you know it.”
Marian doesn’t answer. She doesn’t look at me.
“For fuck’s sake,” I yell. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Marian goes, “I’m not doing anything.”
“Then why are you letting Robin do this to me? You could send me home right now, before anything happens.”
Soft and quiet, Marian says, “Robin gets what he wants. He’s our leader.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “You’re the one who’s in charge.”
“No,” Marian says. “I may be the power behind the throne, but I don’t have the charisma to lead Robin’s followers. They only listen to me when Robin tells them to. So I need Robin to need me.” She gives me a hard look. “I’m a Spark, Jools. I have goals. Keeping Robin happy is a means to that end.”
“So you’ll use me as a means to an end, too?”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Jools: Robin needs sex or else he starts to lose his powers. It’s no different than Popeye needing spinach or Ocean Girl dying without seawater. But what is your problem, Jools? Millions of women would kill to make love with Robin. And women like Tigresse … she could have any man on the planet, but she practically threw herself at Robin. He’s an extremely handsome man; I can tell that you find him attractive. I also doubt that you’re a stranger to one-night stands. You strike me as an actively heterosexual young woman. You’d bed Robin in a heartbeat if you’d just get over your huff.”
“My huff? That’s what you think this is? When you’ve put me in a fucking slave collar?”
Marian rolls her eyes. “It’s not a slave collar. You still have control of your mind. Complete free will.”
“Which is fine right up to the moment when Robin’s Halo hits me. Then I’m Cosby’d.”
Marian shrugs. “You’ll want the sex while it’s happening. Immediately thereafter, I’ll erase your memory. So where’s the harm?”
I grab a metal gadget off a lab bench and throw it at Marian’s head. But I’m Jools, not Ninety-Nine. Marian bobs to one side and my throw misses.
Marian gives me a pitying look, then turns her back on me. She stops in the doorway a moment, looking out at the darkness. Without turning around, she says, “If you fuck him, Jools, then I don’t have to. And at least there’s a chance you’ll enjoy it.”
She steps outside, and the door closes behind her.
* * *
AFTER SHE’S GONE, I look around wildly, searching for something I can use to break the collar. I still don’t recognize any of the crap on the tables. God, what a loser I am! I’ll bet my roommates would recognize some of this shit, even if a lot of it is Cape Tech.
I suddenly realize I have to run. Marian will tell Robin where I am. He may show up any minute.
I flee into the dark woods. I stumble at random through the brush until I find a trail. I follow it blindly. I’m lost, but I’d rather be a moving target than cowering in the shadows.
I look behind me. I don’t see Robin. But the spy drone glim mers along after me in the darkness. I imagine Marian watching. I imagine her talking to Robin on his comm implant, informing him about my every movement.
I flounder through the trees and undergrowth. Maybe Robin will take the hint that I don’t want him. Or maybe if this takes too long, he’ll just get bored and give up. He must be used to instant gratification.
But as I stagger through the dark, I can’t help thinking of Marian’s question: what do I want? It’s stupid to think about that now when I should focus on getting away. But I’m not going to get away, am I? And I can’t face what’s going to happen, so my brain flies off elsewhere.
Me. Jools. What do I want?
Whatever happens in the next few minutes, I’ll soon be back home. Starting a new school term. A new life as a superhero.
What do I want?
I fucking well don’t want to be Maid Marian. Or Robin Hood. Or Diamond. If I thought I’d become like them, I’d build my own version of this collar and quit the super game completely.
But can’t I just be sane? Not a Mad Genius, and not an egomaniac crusader who plows over anyone who gets in the way.
I want to be smart, but kind. I want to be happy with my friends. I want to get laid when I feel like it, on my own terms, maybe with a guy who knows and likes me.
And I want to be rich, famous, and beloved, and to win umpteen Nobel Prizes as well as the Stanley Cup, because shit, only a moron thinks small.
* * *
THE TRAIL THROUGH THE woods ends up at the barracks. Well, at least it’s not Robin Hood’s house.
Behind me, I hear whistling coming through the trees. Not a wolf whistle, but an actual tune: Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen …
Shit! I run into the barracks. I try to lock the door behind me, but the door doesn’t have a lock. Without turning on a light, I race down the corridor. I know where the bathroom is, and I know it has a lock. I also know that a lock won’t keep Robin out—he’s as strong as five ordinary men, and he can shoot energy arrows that will blast the door off its hinges. But maybe a locked door will shield me from his Halo and I can tell him to fuck off.
I find the bathroom. I shut myself in. The room is so small, it’s like hiding in a cupboard.
The spy drone flits around me, glowing in the dark. I imagine Marian watching with interest, to see the moment I get hit with Robin’s aura. I’ll probably unlock the door and melt into his arms.
Fuck you, Marian. I refuse to put on a show.
The bathroom is so small, the spy drone can’t keep away if I really try to get it. It takes me a couple tries, but I finally grab the drone and clutch it in my fist.
The drone struggles like a fly trying to escape between my fingers. I don’t let it. Instead, I try to squeeze it to pieces.
No good. The drone is only the size of a small green pea, and I can’t clench my hand hard enough to damage it. I raise my fist and glare at the little monster as its light seeps out between my fingers.
The drone gets a bit bigger. From a pea to a brown bean.
Weird.
Some kind of defense mechanism? Am I going to get tased again?
Nothing happens.
I think about the drone, all the things it must have in it. Camera, control circuits, flight mechanism, battery. You couldn’t build anything powerful yet so small, except by using the flaky quasi-magic of Cape Tech.
What if …
I lift the drone in my fist. I press it against the slave collar. The bean-sized drone expands to a chickpea.
Without this damned collar, I’d probably comprehend exactly what’s going on. Since I’m only stupid Jools, I have to guess.
The drone contains too much stuff for its size. When it’s close to the collar’s suppression field, it can’t stay as small as it is. Maybe Marian actually built the drone on a larger scale so its parts were easier to work with. Then she shrank it somehow, the way Zircon shrinks from full sized to microscopic.
So.
Am I really going to do this?
Robin’s whistle is coming down the hall. Any moment, he’s going to knock on the door. I don’t know if I’ll be able to resist throwing the door open.
Hope this doesn’t kill me.
I shove the drone under the metal collar.
* * *
THE COLLAR DOESN’T FIT super tight. Anyway, my neck is soft enough to yield under pressure. Still, I have a hard time shoving the drone between my throat and the collar’s metal
band.
The good news: the drone stops struggling to get away. Close to the collar, it goes dead. It obviously doesn’t work in a No Cape Tech zone.
The bad news: I get a splitting headache whenever I touch the collar with my hands. But I grit my teeth against the pain, and use my thumb to poke the drone deeper under the collar.
The drone starts out the size of a chickpea. It doesn’t stay that size for long.
The little drone expands like a balloon: a balloon as solid as a steel ball bearing. It pushes into my neck as hard as it pushes out on the collar. Equal and opposite forces—damn you, Newton! And my neck isn’t nearly as unyielding as the collar’s metal.
Basically, I’m using the drone as a type of crowbar to pry off the collar. Too bad the only fulcrum is my neck.
By the time the drone reaches the size of a golf ball, it’s pressing against me like a hammer. I’m not completely stupid—I didn’t insert the drone where it would crush my windpipe. But it’s compressing my whole fucking neck, squashing my airway and blood vessels so hard …
…
…
* * *
I COME TO, SPRAWLED on the floor. I’m still alive.
The drone lies on the floor in front of my nose. It’s a blackened mess—its circuits have gone electrically kablooey.
Little bugger couldn’t take the strain. Good. Now Marian can’t watch.
Even better, the collar feels loose. Either the strain of the drone’s growth damaged the lock, or else being next to the drone’s electrical meltdown fried the collar’s circuits.
One way or another, the collar is dead. I feel half-dead myself, but I muster the strength to open the collar far enough that it falls off my neck.
I’m not okay. I can barely breathe. But now that I’m her again, I can regenerate.
If there’s time.
The door of the bathroom bursts open, slamming its wooden edge into my gut. Now I can’t breathe at all.
But it’s okay. It’s Robin Hood. Beautiful, kind Robin. He leans over me, a look of concern on his face. In a moment, he’ll sweep me up in his arms and take me someplace warm and safe …
Something white blooms out of nowhere. It starts on the floor and shoots upward, catching Robin full in the face as he leans over me. It’s a fast-rising uppercut delivered by a fist made of rock.
The sucker punch knocks Robin backward out the door, slamming him into the opposite wall of the corridor. He slumps unconscious.
I scream in dismay that my Robin is gone.
Then I moan in relief that I’m free of his spell.
I wrap my arms around Zircon and cry into zir cummerbund.
18
Ecdysis *
ZIRC STROKES MY HAIR for a few seconds, then says, “We should leave. Can you walk?”
I’m still weepy. “How did you find me?”
“Let’s walk and talk.” Zirc tries to help me off the floor, but the bathroom is too constricted and besides, strength is not Zirc’s forte. That super-uppercut trick is only powerful enough to knock out Sparks because Zirc’s growth spurt adds a huge extra force to an otherwise nominal punch. I love Zircon madly, especially at this moment, but ze’s still a four-foot-ten flyweight.
“I can help,” says a voice from the hall. Vernon. When unconsciousness closes Robin Hood’s door, it opens Vernon’s window.
Zircon steps toward him with stony fists raised. “It’s okay,” I tell zir, “Vernon’s cool.”
Vernon snorts. “First time anyone ever said that.” But he hurries and helps me stand. My legs feel as weak as putty. Cutting off blood flow to the brain completely sucks.
I realize I might have died. Maybe I did die. But once the collar got broken, I healed.
I put my arm around Vernon’s shoulder and totter as he walks me down the hall. I say to Zirc, “Where to?”
“That’s one of our problems,” Zirc says. “I haven’t found any way out. I don’t even know where we are.”
I say, “We’re twenty-five klicks straight above Waterloo.”
“Huh,” says Zircon. “I didn’t even know we were airborne. Something prevents me seeing past the walls of this place.”
“Maid Marian told me Sherwood Forest can block all transmissions, both conventional and Cape Tech. I guess that includes your Spark-o-Vision.”
“Yeah,” Zirc says. “And my comm ring. Can’t send or receive squat. Otherwise, I’d have called Aria and Dakini.”
My spirits sag a little. “They aren’t here?”
“Nope, sorry,” Zircon says. “But even if we’re twenty-five kilometers up, Aria could fly here in … uhh…”
“In 72.85 seconds,” I say. “Assuming she flies at the average speed of sound.”
Yeah, baby, I’m back.
As Vernon and I maneuver awkwardly to get through the front door of the barracks, I can feel my wobbly legs getting stronger. Oh, regeneration, if it were possible, I’d totally go down on you.
When we’re outside, Zircon uses Spark-o-Vision to look for trouble. The night might be as black as a Goth’s corset, but Zircon’s weird eyesight doesn’t care. Zirc says, “The coast is clear. But Maid Marian won’t be happy that you destroyed her drone. How many people do you think she’ll send to see what you’re up to?”
“If it were just the spy drone,” I say, “she might not get too upset. Robin was hot on my heels; she’d assume he could handle me. But she might also realize I broke the slave collar. It likely had a tracker in it, and now it’s gone off the grid. Oh, and all the outlaws have comm implants, so maybe she knows that Vernon is here and Robin isn’t.” I stop and look at Vernon. “Do you have an implant? Like, do you and Robin share the same body, and it just reshapes itself? Or are you completely separate?”
“Separate,” Vernon says. “As if Robin and I are truly different people. And Marian has never given me an implant.”
“Good on you,” I tell him.
Zircon says, “We’re in trouble if too many Merry Men run to the rescue. I’ve seen ten Spark outlaws so far, and that’s not counting the robots or Friar Tuck’s animals. No way we can face them all.”
“And next thing you know, we’re both in collars,” I say. “If it comes to that,” I tell Zirc, “shrink out of sight and run like hell.”
“And leave you here with them?” Zirc says. “I heard how Marian wants to use you. It’s sick.”
I say, “Robin’s not around. My man Vernon is here.” I still have my arm propped around his shoulders. I give him a squeeze. “Now, Vernon, I’d be happy to give a tumble. He’s a nice guy.”
I mostly said that to make him blush. I can’t see him in the dark, but I’m sure it worked. Even so, it wasn’t a lie—Vernon’s okay. I’ve slept with worse bros for less reason.
Vernon squinches away. (He’s such a chicken!) “I’ll head for the mead hall,” he says. “I’ll tell them everything is fine.”
“They won’t believe you,” I say. “And they won’t like me roaming around unchaperoned, now that I have my powers back.”
“I’ll tell them you’re hurt and weak,” Vernon says. “And I won’t mention anything about…” He gestures toward Zircon. “You destroyed the drone before your friend showed up. If Marian thinks you’re on your own and seriously injured, she won’t send everyone. Maybe just one or two.”
“Okay, go ahead,” Zircon tells him. “We’ll run in the opposite direction.”
Vernon looks at me for confirmation. Our eyes meet. I smile. “Be safe. And don’t trust Marian. She may look like Vanessa, but she’s not. She thinks she’s trying to save the world, but she’s cutting too many corners.”
“I know,” Vernon says. “I see what Robin sees, remember? But unlike him, I know what it means.”
Vernon gives me a sad little look. For a moment, I think about what his life must be like, watching day after day. How can he bear it?
But the answer is obvious. He bears it because he has no other choice. Besides, it can’t last forever—neither t
he good nor the bad.
I grab him and give him a kiss. He doesn’t kiss me back. When I let him go, he just turns and vanishes into the woods.
* * *
IN A LOW VOICE, Zirc asks, “Any thoughts on where to go?”
“Back to the lab,” I answer. “I might be able to whip together something to teleport us out of here.”
“Can you do it fast?” Zirc asks. “Because from what I’ve seen of Marian, she won’t leave her lab unprotected. She knows that’s where you’re most likely to go, so she’ll send over serious muscle.”
“How much have you actually seen?” I ask. “How long have you been here?”
“A few hours,” Zircon says. “But when I found you, I couldn’t get close because of that collar. As soon as I flew anywhere near you, I lost my Spark-o-Vision and felt myself growing. That spy thing was watching you, too. I figured that if it caught sight of me, Robin’s whole gang would come running and we’d both be screwed. I had to hold back till you dealt with the drone and collar. Nice work, by the way—you killed two birds with one stone.”
I say, “But how did you get to Sherwood in the first place?”
“Less talking, more walking,” Zircon replies. Ze grabs my hand. It’s like getting chummy with a statue—Zirc’s hand is rock hard, and while it’s not particularly cold, it’s not nearly as warm as flesh. “Come on,” Zirc says. “Gotta keep moving.”
We do. Zirc pulls me along the path, much faster than I could go myself. I’m glad someone can see in this darkness. And with 360-degree Spark-o-Vision, Zirc should pick up on incoming outlaws long before they reach us.
Except, I think, for the Artful Dodger, and anyone else who can turn invisible. In an arm-wrestle between Spark-o-Vision and super invisibility, there’s no predicting which would win. But one problem at a time.
Meanwhile, Zirc explains how ze got here. “Grandfather called and told us the feds wanted to transport the bazooka on that train. We all knew it was a trap, just like the memorial service. The Darklings made sure that word leaked out so Robin would take the bait. We talked it over—Aria, Dakini, and I—and we decided to play it low key. I got to the train before it left the station. With the blinder walls, and crates, and everything else, I couldn’t find the gun, not even with Spark-o-Vision. So I just shrank to the size of a virus and hid. Aria and Dakini tracked the train from a few miles away, staying in touch with me through the comm rings. We didn’t care what happened to the bazooka, but if Robin and his outlaws showed up, we wanted to follow them back to their lair so we could rescue you.”
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