“Here we are.” Melinda hopped out of the car and came around to my door to help me out, carefully getting me steady on my feet and handing me my crutch. “I’ll take you all of the way in.”
There was a welcome desk inside the bright, stately foyer, where we began the process of signing me in. I needed a “guest pass,” which was actually a small lozenge I had to swallow, as well as a single-use contact in my right eye for the retinal scan. Blinking back tears (I was never good at getting contacts in), I managed to survive the light blasting into my eye that permitted the elevator doors to open, and a full-body scan that allowed the lift to move.
There was no panel of buttons, nothing to push; the elevator operated on voice recognition only. Melinda put a hand to her mouth to indicate I should stay quiet as the doors slid smoothly closed behind us. Then, she said a single word: “Leviathan.”
I laughed in the hollow of the elevator then, and she grinned at me. “I couldn’t believe it at first either when I was brought on board,” she admitted.
I’d been going over in my head which of the villains might have decided to grant me this audience. Firewall had seemed like an obvious choice, valuing information as they did, and I could imagine being quietly put to work in the data mines; it seemed peaceful. If I’d had to choose, I’d been hoping for Cassowary, who was known to be brutal to heroes, but had a strong reputation as a fair employer to her henches, offering more support, benefits, and structure than most. It had even occurred to me that it might be Megalodon, who was rumored to be working on a superweapon called the Jaw and was actively hiring, but I didn’t want to flatter myself too much thinking someone that famous would have taken an interest in me.
But Leviathan? Leviathan was the monster lurking beneath the surface of the world. Most heroes hoped to never be in the same room with him. Now, we were about to be breathing the same air. When the elevator stopped, Melinda walked me down a long hallway to a room with a set of massive double doors made of copper and dark wood. Despite the weight they opened like silk when she touched an oxidized handle.
The room beyond had the odd electric crackle of many quiet machines operating in unison, the inaudible but palpable buzz of a server room. It was large but not cavernous, with a few deep leather chairs in one corner for intimate meetings and a long, sleek table that was clearly a work surface. One entire wall was a massive screen, currently split and displaying four different newscasts, all with the sound off.
Behind the desk, watching the screen wall intently, stood Leviathan. His stance had a courtly formality to it that was also wrong somehow, eerie and reptilian. He wore his armor, which he was never seen without. I’d heard it described as a mecha suit, but it appeared more like snakeskin than metal at this distance: dense and sleek and oddly organic. Bits of it shone, like the shell of a beetle. Rumor had it the tech in it was so advanced it was functionally indistinguishable from magic.
It was also rumored that Leviathan was hideously ugly or inhuman under that suit, though no one had ever come forward with evidence of what he might actually look like. Of all the villains and heroes, his identity was the most obscure. All that he was now completely obliterated whomever or whatever he might have been.
Melinda nudged me and I started; I hadn’t realized I was both frozen in place and openly staring at him. I gave my head a tiny shake and moved into the room, walking with Melinda’s help.
Leviathan didn’t move as we crossed his office to his desk. Once there, Melinda carefully helped me sit in one of the two chairs across from his (a hyperergonomic monstrosity that looked a lot like an alien spinal column, but had excellent lumbar support). Once I was seated, he turned slightly, inclining his plated head toward Melinda in a weird gesture of acknowledgment and thanks.
“Wait outside a moment,” he said to her. His voice was warm and oiled, but also slightly metallic, as though distorted by digital interference. “This won’t be long, and Miss Tromedlov may need your assistance again.”
Melinda nodded. “Yes, Sir,” she said, and gave my arm a barely perceptible squeeze in solidarity before leaving the room.
Leviathan didn’t sit down at his desk, but remained standing behind it. When the doors slid shut with a muffled weight, he finally turned his full attention toward me. He didn’t rush to speak and break the tension in the room, but took a long time assessing me, studying my face, my leg and its brace. I straightened my shoulders with what I hoped was a bit of shabby dignity and waited.
“It has come to my attention you may be in need of new employment, Miss Tromedlov.”
The world shimmered around me for a moment, but I held it together. “I am.”
“Apparently your last contract was terminated somewhat prematurely.”
“Yes. It’s certainly limited my options.”
“While I do take a particular interest in anyone who has been victimized as you were, you have other qualities that drew my attention.”
“That’s flattering.” I couldn’t quite believe this was happening, and felt like someone else was speaking using my mouth.
He made a small humming sound. “Your agency file is a fascinating mix of exemplary work and boredom.”
I couldn’t contain a real laugh; the sound seemed to startle him, but not unpleasantly. “I don’t think I have ever heard my career summed up so perfectly.”
He watched me again for a moment. His eyes were dark, and the sockets in his armor came right up to their very edges.
“It was your research into the cost of heroism, which you dubbed the ‘Injury Report,’ that I find most interesting.”
From the way he said the word “interesting,” I could not immediately tell if this was a very good or a very bad thing. I decided “thank you” was the safest response.
He gave a small nod. “You’ve done much with nothing, seeming to spin straw into gold from the most meager bundles. I would see what you can do with my vast storehouses.”
I let out a weird, uncontrolled laugh. Did this monster just make a fairy-tale reference? “Are you threatening to chop off my head or take my firstborn if I can’t repeat the success?”
He made the oddest sound. “I’ve no use for your head detached from the rest of you.”
I realized I might have made a mistake. “I mean, of course you don’t. I didn’t think you were going to decapitate me. I mean, you could, but you won’t! Um.” I managed to make myself stop talking and wondered if spontaneous human combustion could be voluntary.
His face didn’t change, but I sensed his raised eyebrow. He decided, after a moment, to have mercy on me and continue. “I am curious what you are capable of with resources far less finite, yes. Would you continue and expand the Injury Report under such circumstances?”
“Absolutely, if such an opportunity was even possible.”
“It is.” There was no doubt in his voice.
“What exactly are you offering me, Sir?”
“That depends. I have one more question.”
“Okay.”
“Do you hate them now?”
I was shocked by the intensity of my reaction. I felt my chest tighten and a weird acidic burn crawl up my throat. “Them” was such a vague word, but the hate I felt was extraordinarily specific, and right at the front of my mind. There was the petty disloyalty of two-bit villains like the Eel. The ineffectual brutality and brown-nosing of the police. The blithely ignorant wrecking machines that were all of the heroes, unaware of the human and material costs of their every stupid, impetuous move.
And then there was Supercollider, the disaster that had derailed my small, pitiful life and shown me exactly how precarious and nearly loveless it was.
“Yes.” The response seemed to come from somewhere else, some deep recess of my body.
Leviathan nodded. “Good.” He touched a comm pad on his desk, and raised his voice a little. “Melinda, you can join us again.” He looked back down at me. “The specifics of the position are negotiable, and I am confident we can offer
you a package that you will be content with.”
I heard the doors slide open and Melinda reenter the room. “This feels too easy,” I admitted.
He made that odd rumble again and I realized it might be a quiet laugh. “It seems to me like it’s been quite difficult for you indeed.” I blanched. He looked over at Melinda. “Please take Miss Tromedlov to her new apartment, and once she’s settled see to it her orientation takes place on schedule.”
“Of course, Sir.” She bent down to help me stand, and I found that I was unexpectedly wobbly. Leviathan and I had been alone only a few minutes, but I felt incredibly drained. She let me take a moment to get my bearings.
“Thank you,” I said to both of them. Leviathan nodded, his attention already turning back to the screens in front of him. Melinda gave my arm, which she was supporting, another quick squeeze, and then carefully helped me navigate my way out of the room.
She was cool and businesslike until the moment the doors shut behind us, when she leaned in, grinning. “I think you’re really going to like it here.”
“Wait. Did I just agree to take this job? And did he just say ‘new apartment’?”
The rest of the day was a blur. The first place Melinda took me was the snug little suite in one of the residence buildings, a spartan studio that was neat as a pin and had a lot of east-facing sunlight. I was overwhelmed by the sudden prospect of a job, but a place to live that wasn’t also June’s couch was too much to process. Melinda seemed to clue in to the fact that my brain was misfiring and left me alone rather than marching me down to HR. I was so stressed out I almost immediately fell asleep on the velvet love seat that was now apparently mine, for the time being.
I was awakened by knocking. The light had shifted—hours had gone by, and I shot up in panic. I shuffled, shattered and bleary, to the door to find a pair of red-faced and overly cheerful movers, bearing my few earthly possessions. I had a string of text notifications from June, presumably about my unceremonious departure. I chose to ignore them while the friendly, too-loud men deposited laundry hampers and garbage bags of my clothes everywhere they could find floor space.
Once they left, I wandered around my three small rooms, hanging up some clothes in the closet, setting up my laptop, placing books on the shelf. My view overlooked a little green space, and though the lawn was brown and patchy, the star of still-visible desire lines through the grass seemed to promise it would soon be full of people enjoying nicer weather.
It occurred to me that I wouldn’t even need to get my few pieces of bashed-up furniture out of the storage unit Supercollider had rented for me, out of guilt or pity. I wondered how long I could leave it there, how many months he’d keep picking up the tab before it went to auction. The thought of him forgetting and paying to store my scratched-up bed frame for years amused me.
Early that evening, a bustling, extremely polite HR representative paid me a visit to fill out paperwork and go over the particulars of my injury, treatment, and rehab. I was worried that my medical file might change their minds about hiring me, but HR assured me that their vision was “long-term” and that for the next few weeks, my job very well might just be healing, if their on-site doctors determined that was for the best. Afterward, they even pointed me in the direction of a lovely little café right across the green space from my suite. Once I was alone again, I braved the cold and had a celebratory meal of spaghetti carbonara and a bottle of wine.
Sitting at that small bistro table, I pulled out my still-smashed phone for the first time in over twelve hours—and was hit by the realization that June had no idea whatsoever what had happened to me. The number of panicked messages on my phone, in order of rapidly descending coherence, confirmed this.
What had happened from her perspective, I quickly pieced together, was that when she left in the morning she knew I was headed to an interview. Not only did I never come home, but when she came back that evening, every one of my belongings had been spirited out of the house as though it had never been there. Her door was as locked as it was when she left, and nothing had been disturbed, as if my existence had been neatly deleted.
So of course she assumed I had been disappeared. She reasonably guessed that the Draft, or some nameless hero, or Supercollider himself, had finally taken enough umbrage at my pointing out how much worse they made the world for everyone that they decided to simply remove me from the picture rather than endure my continued, annoying presence on this earth.
I stared at all of her messages and tried to think of how I could possibly apologize for scaring her so badly. And, in the process, apologize again for how unsafe I’d made her feel, and how unwilling I had ultimately been to change anything about what I was doing for her comfort.
I did the worst possible thing, of course. She picked up immediately when I called.
“Hey,” I said, “I got the job.”
3
IT TOOK ABOUT A MONTH FOR ME TO GET MEDICAL APPROVAL before I could get to work. I learned that, at first, my duties were going to consist entirely of medical appointments, evaluations, and a very proactive treatment plan. My medication was adjusted slowly, sometimes in daily increments, and I was assigned a sweet but diabolical physiotherapist. I hated every part of it, but I had to grudgingly admit it worked.
One thing that did not recover was my relationship with June. She tore into me for letting her think I was dead or worse for a whole business day, and hung up on me before I could muster even a feeble apology. I sent her chat messages and emails; I even called her twice, letting it ring three times before hanging up like a coward. Over time, my deluge of contrition slowed to a trickle. I was deeply lonely, but eventually accepted that she needed time and space.
Only after my physiotherapist, a doctor, a psychiatrist (every incoming staff member had an extensive evaluation), and an orthopedic surgeon agreed it was reasonable did I have my first work-like experience. I met with a being made of data with goggle-thick glasses named Molly. Their hands had been completely replaced with robotic equivalents that ended in sixteen superfine fingers, each tapering to a small textured nub for added grip. Molly’s glasses weren’t just to correct nearsightedness either, but served as small, secondary data displays. Molly was the head of several small departments, one of which was called Information & Identities, which was where, they suspected, I would be most at home.
I expected to be handed tasks, to be told what my job was going to entail. Instead, Molly and I worked through my file together, essentially building what my position would be. I showed them the Injury Report and all of the research that went into it, and what my methods had been (limited as they were).
“Good, this is good.” Molly nodded enthusiastically, lines of text ticking by on one of their lenses. “I like the way you move information around. I’m going to introduce you to the Information & Identities team—I think you might be a good fit here.”
I was given a desk in I&I, and after a round of introductions I was left to my own devices. To start, I was to continue working on the Injury Report and look for opportunities to expand it, as Leviathan’s resources allowed.
What I had to do, I slowly realized, was come up with something to do with it all.
For two weeks, I drank a lot of coffee and got around awkwardly on my crutches, fretting semi-regularly that I was going to be fired at any moment for not doing anything particularly groundbreaking. No one gave me any flak, however—just provided space and watched me from a distance. I spent a great deal of time circling between fussing at the data and clicking aimlessly around my social media accounts, until I had what I was sure was a very bad idea. It was, however, my first and only idea, so I asked for a meeting with Molly and spent a couple of days assembling a proposal.
Of course, when we were actually in the room together, I didn’t even bother to fire up my first slide before I leaned forward and said, with more excitement than I expected to hear in my own voice, “What if we fuck with them.”
Molly had been tink
ering with a technical readout when I arrived; rarely anyone got their full attention, but I managed to startle them into making eye contact with me. Their eyebrows and forehead seemed to be at war with each other as they tried to raise and furrow their brow at the same time.
I saw my opportunity and pounced. “So, exposing secret identities is passé, right?”
“Right.”
“And most of the heroes are out and the rest we can make a pretty good guess at. Even if we’re right, we don’t gain much outing them. But we have all of that data.”
Molly nodded. “Fifteen-odd years of tracking careers, powers, activity and inactivity, battles, defeats, injuries, associations.”
“Besides what we’ve gathered ourselves, we’ve got access to so much more.” I was not prepared, when I took the job, for exactly how impossibly vast the data pools were. After finding some surprisingly detailed numbers once, I’d asked the data scientist who provided them exactly what databases we had access to. Social media, retailers, advertising networks—it didn’t matter. They’d casually stated, “If it’s on a corporate hard drive, we can get it. If it’s on a government hard drive, I give it even odds.”
I’d been nearly giddy when I heard that.
“What if,” I continued now, “instead of focusing on who they are, and what they’ve done, we put that data to use trying to anticipate what they’re going to do.”
Molly’s frown deepened, but not angrily. “You’re talking about predictive data modeling.”
I nodded eagerly. “Exactly! We take that fifteen years of hero behavior we’ve tracked, and we connect it to the literally billions of points of consumer data we have access to. We integrate those databases. Then we hire an army of data scientists and start running simulations. We know what they’ve done in the past and we know how much damage they’ve done; we can start modeling what we think they’re going to do. Once we have a model that works, we run more direct experiments.”
Hench Page 9