When I missed a late-afternoon medical appointment, they first called to remind me, then sent someone over to make sure I hadn’t blacked out or my new circuitry hadn’t gone haywire. I apologized, but I would not go with them back to Medical. My throat was raw from sobbing and my entire face hurt.
Distantly, I wondered what would happen next. Would they send a different medical team, this one with tranquilizers and higher security clearance, who would just scoop me up and take me back?
Whatever the official protocol was never happened; Keller came instead.
He knocked, but didn’t wait for me to answer. I yelped and leapt up awkwardly in surprise. He stood there, looking at my swollen face gravely, taking in the tissues scattered around the apartment. I was covered in misery sweat and my face stung from salt. I made some noise about him barging in, which he completely ignored.
After a moment he gave a tiny nod and said, “Get cleaned up and dressed, and meet me at the Hole in an hour.” He spoke with easy, complete authority, and whatever barb I was about to lob at him dried up in my mouth. “Standing me up isn’t an option.” He nodded again, turned, and let himself out.
I SERIOUSLY THOUGHT about standing him up, but I knew he’d just keep coming back until I relented. So after showering and holding an ice pack to my face for a while, I dragged myself down to the Hole to meet Keller, where he sat, smiling. Between my cane, the eye patch, and the still-fresh head wound, I felt monstrous. While we all worked for a supervillain, most of Leviathan’s staff still weren’t hardened enough that they wouldn’t give me a longer look than usual. The scrutiny bothered me less than it would have a few months ago, but it still itched.
“You still look terrible.” He smiled wider.
My lip curled. “I know.”
Our server appeared, and Keller ordered a pitcher.
“I can’t drink after—”
“Don’t feel obligated.” He waved his hand across the table. “Figured we wouldn’t want to be disturbed by her checking up too often.”
“That’s . . . really smart.”
He grinned and expertly poured himself a glass of something that smelled hoppy and fresh, just the ghost of a head collecting on top. “So.”
“So how are you. How’s the Meat.”
He made a face. “Nice try. We’re here to talk about how you’re doing, smart-ass.”
“Must we.”
“Indulge me. How are you?”
“Wretched.”
He grunted. I stared. “Well, you’re here. Want to talk about it?”
I rubbed my forehead. “You remember June?”
“Yeah, I liked her. Terrible bitch—really funny.”
“She . . . We can’t talk anymore.”
His face hardened a little. “Ah. I’m sorry.”
Suddenly the cardboard coaster his beer was resting on became fascinating. I stared at it.
“You two involved?”
“She was my best friend.”
“That’s a rough one.”
We were both quiet for a long moment, but not uncomfortably. He took another sip or two. There was a baseball game on the muted television screen on a wall behind me. Keller glanced up occasionally to check the score.
“This is when it starts happening, you know,” he said.
“What?”
“People leaving you.”
I was startled. “This is a thing?”
“Absolutely. You’re a bit successful, getting a name. That’s when they start abandoning ship.”
“You have a funny definition of ‘success.’” I sounded even more bitter than I’d meant to. “My name is a joke that stuck, and all I’ve earned from two encounters with Supercollider is a permanent limp and an eye patch.”
“Names all start as jokes or insults, before we own them. And you survived Supercollider twice. He’s a hell of an enemy to have.”
“I will admit I am lucky.”
“I refuse to let you dismiss my utter fucking symphony of an operation as luck.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Getting you out of there was a nightmare, but we did it. You do good work and we needed you here. That’s why you survived.”
“I—thank you.”
“Self-deprecation has splash damage.”
“Why are you being so goddamn wise.”
“Because you’re being impossible. As soon as you settle down, I can return to being a meathead again.”
“I’m . . . getting accustomed to the idea that I’m valued here. I just didn’t think I’d lose June when that happened.”
“Oh?”
I felt my face become tight. I felt raw and ragged, the words ready to pour out, but it was Keller sitting across from me. I’d assumed he had all the tenderness and understanding of a water buffalo. But there he was, sitting across from me.
My throat was tight, but I pushed past it. “June and I started out together. We’d go to the Temp Agency, make ourselves feel better by making fun of everyone else when we were just as desperate, just as scared. We took the worst jobs, terrible assignments, whatever we could get our hands on. Because we could talk about it, mock it. We had each other, and that made it all bearable.”
He was listening. His big hands were still on the table and he was looking at me, steadily.
“Even when I got hurt, when Supercollider . . . happened, she was there. She came to the hospital, to make it all a little less shitty. She set up a nest for me in her apartment when I had no one and nowhere to go. Painted my toenails . . .” I trailed off.
“But then you saw her a lot less.”
I nodded.
“Was it when you got this job?”
“No, much earlier. Back when I started the Injury Report. We were living together, and she hated it. It made her anxious.”
“Makes sense.”
“Yeah. But I didn’t listen to her; I kept working. Then when I got this job, it was worse. And it was my fault—I kept frightening her. She never came here. It freaked her out.”
“And then you were taken.”
“Yeah.”
“They get scared that it’s going to happen to them, you know. Like the violence is contagious.”
We were both quiet for a bit. Keller drained his glass, refilled it, rubbed the back of his neck. Finally, he said, “You’d think people would be much more afraid to hang out with heroes and kicks.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, they have a much higher mortality rate. You date a hero? You’re their best friend? Their mom? The uncle who raised them? You’re getting kidnapped three times a week, easy.”
I chuckled. “True.”
“’Course it is. When’s the last time a villain’s fiancée was spirited away from their engagement party and tied to the front of a speeding train for ransom?”
I actually barked out a small laugh at that. “They really should step up their game.”
“You know why they can’t get to our loved ones?” Keller asked.
“Because they’d never stoop to it?” I answered.
“Because we don’t have any.”
I made an awful choking noise, like he’d punched me in the throat. Now it was Keller’s turn to stare at the table.
“My husband. He couldn’t deal with the career change,” he said. “He wanted to be respectable. He liked that. He liked waving me goodbye, waiting for me to come home.” His big hands were cupped around his glass. There was a noticeable callus on the third finger of his left hand, where he must have worn a ring that was slightly too tight for his thick fingers.
“Why’d you put on a black cape?”
He bared his teeth. “The usual. Saw too many good men denied promotions or benefits. Too many honors given out to some powerful fuck’s idiot kid.”
I nodded and pressed my lips together. That wasn’t all, but he was taking his time getting there.
“Plus, Leviathan was just smarter than anyone else. I wanted to be led by someone I wante
d to follow.”
“Did he come to you?”
Keller cracked a smile. “Back when he was more openly confrontational, I was part of a team that was called in when he was causing shit with this biomechanical submarine. Coast guard couldn’t deal with it on their own, and all the supes powerful enough to confront him were conveniently tied up.”
“Did you stop him? Was he impressed?”
Keller laughed, embarrassed. “Hell no; he massacred us. I speak figuratively in this case. He could have slaughtered us all, but didn’t. He crippled our frigate and made a complete fucking mess of things. Turns out he was just doing some testing and the chain of command overreacted; we never should have been sent in there. He spun a damn cocoon around my little ship and boarded us like it was nothing.”
I was rapt now. I knew the device that Keller was talking about, a defensive weapon that Leviathan called the hagfish. It shot something that was a bit like spider silk, but a lot more gel-like and awful. I enjoyed picturing it being used on something the scale of a ship; I’d only ever before seen it used on superheroes, which was funny enough.
“He had us captured, fair and square. I think he was about to toss us in the brig and just carry on. Then, like a joke occurred to him, he cocked his head to the side and asked if I wanted to come join him instead. Don’t know what got into me, but I was mad as hell, so I said yes.”
I was grinning. Keller looked at me and smirked proudly, but then his smile faded. He took a long drink.
“My husband decided not to come with me.”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
He rolled his shoulders. “His prerogative.”
“Do you regret it?”
He shook his head. “This is more honest.”
“Henching never struck me as honest work.”
He pointed a thick finger at me. “More honest than anything out there. I used to play at being a hero too, just not with a fucking cape. We were supposed to be noble, but we were just as cruel, corrupt, and selfish as anyone else. You just have to hide it, pretend everyone’s doing good.”
“With henching, you know where you stand,” I allowed.
“Exactly. You own the cruelty, the scheming; it’s all on the surface. No one wants to be a real hero; it’s too hard. My husband didn’t give a damn whether the work I was doing was noble as long as it appeared to be. When I killed someone then—something I did a lot more than I do now—it was for the greater good. It was such bullshit. So the second the pretense was gone, so was he. I didn’t need that.”
I admired the clearheadedness with which he’d made these choices, how he’d had some kind of internal direction and followed it, knowing the consequences. When I compared it to my own story, I saw just how much I had drifted and fallen, rudderless, in the beginning. “When I started out, I think I was playing at being a villain. I didn’t think it was as dangerous as it was.”
“You seem to have figured it out. Not everyone’s cut out to risk limbs and eyes just because they’re poor and pissed,” Keller offered, winking at me.
“I didn’t really choose this.” I gestured to my whole body in a sweeping, dismissive motion.
“Yeah, you did,” he said firmly. “You might not have known it at the time. But you went down the rabbit hole.” He drank while I scowled at him. “Sure, you got your leg broke, but you could have bolted, gone back to school, and become a lawyer or some shit. You could have promised to be good so it never happened again. But here you are.”
“Does that make me stupid?”
“Nah; it makes you a little bit evil, though.”
“Flatterer.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m petty and mean, maybe, but I don’t know if picking on heroes the way I do fully counts as evil.”
Keller suddenly raised his hands into claws. Deepening his voice, he spoke in a caricature of Leviathan’s metallic rumble: “To seek vengeance and power instead of cowering when the world punishes you. That’s what they think evil is, do they not?”
I burst out laughing. “I suppose so.” My hand wandered absently to my scalp.
Keller watched my hand, and suddenly grew serious. “Look at you,” he said quietly. “Look at how damn afraid they were. Look what they did to you just because you wouldn’t be scared.”
“Is this the alternative, then? Covered in scars and full of circuitry? Lonely as hell?”
“It’s not all that bad,” he said.
“How do you figure?”
“You know yourself. You know who you’re working for. You’re making choices with your eyes—well, eye—open.”
I scowled at him again.
He gave an offhanded shrug. “And what have you got to lose? Not much more for you to be scared of, I imagine. That’s what villains have that no one else does.”
I picked up my soda water and looked into it. “Bleak, Keller.”
“Not at all. It means we’re tougher.”
“You haven’t addressed the crippling loneliness.”
“Frankly, I’m hurt that you aren’t counting my company.”
“That’s not what I—”
“I know.”
I let a silence stretch between us, uncertain if it was uncomfortable or not.
“It’s not that there’s no one, Auditor. Sure, the pool’s more limited, but everyone who’s left are people who get it.”
“So you’re saying I’m not doomed to a solitary existence.”
“Not for a lot of promotions yet. You’re young, you’ll be pretty again soon. And if I can rustle myself up a companion for a nice steak dinner now and again, you’ll be just fine.” He drank and waggled an eyebrow. He looked terribly pleased with himself and it wrung a smile out of me. “I won’t lie—it’s more difficult at the beginning, kiddo,” he said. “But you’ll get used to it. And hey: it’s a hell of a lot harder for them to lay siege to you now.”
I nodded. One of my hands wandered to my chest, and I pressed hard just below my collarbone. There was still a physical ache, a raw and bloody sense of loss. But it was healing.
I KEPT HEALING. It was a slow, extremely frustrating process. I hated the deep, loathsome itch of flesh repairing itself, and I hated how much time the process required. I tried to be better this time, to see my body as an ally instead of an adversary, but it was still immensely hard. As my skin grew back together and the grafts that replaced the bone that had been sawed out of my head gradually solidified, I got stronger in tiny, agonizing increments.
My recovery kept me busy. This time, instead of being stranded on a couch for weeks on end with little contact, I had a steady schedule of appointments with specialists and therapists to make sure everything was knitting well, that my implants and upgrades weren’t being rejected, that my brain was processing the new influx of data. I was always being evaluated, my treatment moving forward or scaling back, depending on how I reacted and progressed.
For important milestones, Leviathan would sit in on the assessments and occasionally order a test of his own. I saw him now more than I ever had before, and I found myself becoming increasingly attached to this new attention. The days I saw him were like rewards, something worth making progress for. His interventions weren’t complicated and almost never very probing, just a few questions, a fingertip resting against my temple or lymph nodes. I kept a small database in my head of every time he had touched me, and noticed that over time, he held the contact a little longer. A tiny upward trend.
After four months of recovery, however, I was called into his office for an unscheduled meeting. This piqued my interest. He’d flatly refused to entertain any questions about when I might be able to resume my duties, but I immediately expected that this was a first step toward getting me back to work. He brought a doctor into the meeting with him and said he wanted to supervise one last examination with his own eyes before he considered placing some weight back on my shoulders.
They were thorough, careful to the point of being anxious. He d
ouble-and triple-checked the doctor’s work, going back and measuring again. For a long time, he worked on me in silence, concentrating on what was left of my wounds. I let my eyes close to pay attention to the other data: the light touches and pressures of his tinkering, the two of them talking to each other while he worked as though I weren’t even there.
When the exam was over, the doctor left without giving me any results. Leviathan stared into my left eye, the patch that had been covering it discarded. His face was just a few inches from mine. Close up, his armor made a curious sound, the tiny scales sliding against each other like miniature tectonic plates.
After a long time, he spoke. “Good. This is very good.”
“Thank you,” I said, as though I had anything to do with what pleased him.
“Look up,” he commanded, and pulled down my left eyelid. I expected his fingertip to feel smooth, but it was almost like extremely fine velcro.
“The implants are healing well,” he said, releasing my face and stepping back. “How is your vision?”
“Odd,” I admitted, sweeping my gaze over his office. His armor now had a slightly iridescent sheen to it, and a few of the objects in his office glowed. “I can see more than I could before. It’s confusing.”
He nodded. “That’s to be expected. Your brain is learning to categorize the new data. The most difficult challenge now will be disguising your reactions; you may find you see some things that are unexpected. Do not be like the midwife who found herself gifted with fairy sight, starting every time she passed a sprite at the market.”
Leviathan did like fairy tales. I smiled a little. “I’ll work on it,” I promised. I looked at the palm of my hand, wondering a moment at the details I could see now, the whorls of my fingertips, the fine folds of skin at each joint.
“I have decided that you will be working with Vesper while you adjust to the implants,” he said, watching me closely. “He’s had significant augmentations and has adjusted exceedingly well, especially to the sensory changes.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
He turned slightly away, satisfied. I was beginning to lose his attention. I could have dismissed myself, if I wanted. Instead, I lingered in my seat a moment.
Hench Page 18