by J Bennett
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Did I hurt you?”
I roll to face him. My left hand grabs the front of his uniform and pulls him close. My other hand scrabbles at his belt. I wrap my fingers around the Torch Whip and pull with all my might. The button holding it in place pops open.
I have it.
For one brief second, our eyes meet. His are wide, the electric green irises filled with surprise. I can’t imagine what he sees in my eyes. I don’t think I want to know. Because next, I spin and hit him in the chest with both feet. The impact sends him sliding on his back across the parlor.
He recovers fast, jacking up to his feet.
Not fast enough.
I’ve managed to fumble on the Torch Whip. The whip glows a warm, buttery yellow and crackles with electric energy.
“No!” Shine cries.
Holding tight to the handle, I snap the whip toward him. My technique is awful, but it doesn’t matter. The computerized whip seeks out Shine’s body heat and wraps around his waist. I press the button on the handle to deliver the shock. It must be preset to stun, because he only manages a small croak of protest before he collapses to the floor.
After a little exploration, I find a smaller button on the side of the handle that allows me to unwind and retract the whip. It curls automatically when I turn it off. I feel sick knowing that I used Adan’s compassion against him. It was underhanded. Cruel. Worthy of a henchman.
But the cams are still filming.
I slip the cracked goggles over my eyes, and, with effort, set my face into a triumphant smile. I stand over Shine’s splayed body and hold the pose long enough to ensure that Leo can get plenty of shots.
Then I gather the lasso from the floor and use it to truss him up. My ribs scream with every move, and my right hand throbs. My fingers are slow, but I force them to tie the knots I memorized so dutifully when Alby and I were training for The Ends of the Earth. Even after all this time, I still remember.
As I tug the last knot tight, Shine groans softly.
The front door of the house swings open. I look up, right into Lysee’s astonished face. She opens her mouth and screams.
Chapter 20
Most science experiments fail, but the ones that succeed can change the world. So, Pogo Girl, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your involuntary participation. Now, into the gelatin you go!
The Professor, S4, E8
“That’s Shine!” Lysee shrieks. “Is he dead? DID YOU KILL SHINE?”
“Would I be tying him up if he were dead?” I ask.
Lysee isn’t listening. She totters forward on impossibly high heels. Bright red bows lining the hem of her skirt bounce as she slides down to her knees.
“Shine! Shine? Are you okay?” She looks up at me and gasps. “Those are MY goggles.” Recognition dawns on her face followed by a frown. “And they don’t match your lab coat at all. Honestly, Alice.”
“Don’t use my name,” I tell her.
“What are you… and Shine,” she stammers waving her hands at me and then him. “You’ve got to let him go.
“Yeah, let him go,” Shine says. His eyes are open, but glazed. He heaves himself into a sitting position and tugs against the rope around his wrists. I suddenly worry that, with his armor giving him extra strength, Shine will snap through the bindings, but the knots and the rope hold against his struggles.
“Out of the way,” I tell my roommate. “You’re ruining the scene.” Leo’s going to have to edit out this little hiccup.
Lysee’s head swivels. She spots the cam drones — both Leo’s and Shine’s — and freezes for exactly one sec to contemplate this new info.
Then she throws herself upon Shine with a great cry, knocking him over in the process. “No, you evil bitch!” she hollers. “I may be a helpless citizen, an absolute nobody named Lysee Adler, but I won’t let you harm this heroic and handsome man! You’ll have to get through me first!”
“Ow. Your knee is on my…” Shine groans.
I grab the collar of Lysee’s gauzy blouse and drag her off my prisoner.
Shine still looks a little woozy, but he’s aware of the cams, too. “Don’t throw your life away for me,” he says gallantly.
It’s everything I can do not to roll my eyes, especially as Lysee theatrically bursts into tears. She ineffectively slaps at me and tries to find purchase. Too bad her ridic shoes keep slipping.
“Don’t you dare hurt her!” Shine hollers at me. Now he’s getting into the swing of things. “Take me if you must, but leave this innocent girl alone.”
I might as well play along, since this is almost certainly going in the next ep now anyway. I grab the big red bow pinning the front of Lysee’s blouse together and pull her toward me.
“Stay out of my way,” I growl at her, “and if you dare tell anyone what you saw today, I’ll find out what the highest setting on this whip really does.”
“You’re a… a monster!” Lysee sputters. The sheer quantity of tears she’s mustered in the last minute is nothing short of impressive. She grabs my hand, and I feel her fingers working at something. The bow suddenly tears away, and my roommate falls back with a cry, clutching the front of her blouse ineffectually as the cams get a nice, long look at her enviable cleavage.
Dear Buddha.
I almost want to applaud that performance, but instead I let out an ugly chuckle and turn back to Shine. No way I’m letting Lysee distract me so that he can find a way out of my ropes. The Henchman’s Survival Guide constantly warns readers about these types of common henchman blunders.
“Shine,” Lysee whimpers behind me.
“Don’t worry. I’ve been in worse scrapes than this,” he says, flashing her a cocky smile.
“Come on, Romeo,” I say, hauling him to his feet by his bound hands. “You’ve got a date, and it ain’t with Juliet.”
It’s such a cringey line, but I bet the audience will heart it. I push Shine along. His steps are uneven. I wonder if he’s faking, if he’ll try something, but then I notice the way his muscles seize and jerk under his tight costume. He’s still feeling the effects of the electric current that went through him. Just in case, though, I turn on the Torch Whip.
I look back. Lysee has retreated, crouching against the back wall of the parlor. The tears have smeared her makeup, but she still looks gorg. She’s def won herself some good lens time when this ep comes out.
Forcing Shine to face the wall, I rotate the potted plants the way Matthew showed me and then type the code into the wall panel that pops open. The code is Matthew’s birthday, a little piece of sentimentality from his dad that he refuses to appreciate.
A bookshelf spins, revealing a small elevator.
Very cheesy, yes. Who even owns physical books anymore?
I shove Shine into the elevator.
“Don’t try anything,” I tell him.
“Romeo and Juliet?” Shine shakes his head. “You gotta think up better lines.”
“I’m new at this.”
“Shocker.”
“Hey! I defeated you,” I point out.
“Maybe I wanted to get captured. Maybe it was all part of my plan.” Shine juts out his chin. I admire him for this, but I’m not fooled, either.
“Beacon isn’t coming, is she?” I ask. “She doesn’t know you’re here. You wanted to bag a biggie on your own and use it to spin off. Capturing The Professor was going to be your iconic moment.”
Shine’s silence confirms my suspicion, then he turns, facing away from the six cam drones that have hitched a ride with us. I haven’t failed to notice the increased number of cams on the scene. Leo has dedicated all his lenses to my action.
Shine’s face is now uncomfortably close to mine.
“Don’t do this,” he whispers. The bravado is gone. “If it’s dollars, I’ll pay you. If it’s exposure, I’ll get you on my show. I know producers. Alice, please.”
I step back, putting space between us. A question has been gnawing at me. “Yo
u knew The Professor was using his old lair, and you were looking for the elevator like you knew it was here. They never showed that in the old eps. Someone told you. Who?”
He answers my question with one of his own.
“Have you told them my identity?” Shine’s voice is very quiet. He knows he’s ruined if I did.
The doors ding open. I wrap the whip around his waist and give him a shock on the lowest setting — just enough to let him know I’ve figured out how to use the thing.
“Start walking,” I tell him.
“Please,” he says. Beacon will almost certainly drop him when she finds out that he went prowling on a solo mission. Doesn’t help anything that he got caught.
“This will finish me,” Shine admits, using that same soft, imploring voice.
“And it’ll make me.” I give him a shock on the next higher level. His body tenses with the charge. I push away all the regret. I need to do this. I remind myself that Adan stepped over countless people to get to Beacon’s side. When her last sidekick, Glow, was nudged into retirement (rumor was she got pregnant by Grunt, a low-level henchman for Tick-Tock), even I watched the eps of the tryouts for her replacement. They were epic and vicious. A dozen people ended up in the hospital, and there was some serious drama and backstabbing before Shine was announced.
I nudge Shine, and he steps out of the elevator. I follow.
The old lair has been transformed since I received my tour two years ago. It’d been moderately clean back then, and homey, since Gerald still liked hanging around down here, watching old eps of his show while munching on crust-less grilled cheese sandwiches. Now, the place is dark and dank. Spiderwebs hang in the corners, and the shelves are cluttered with rusting science equipment and beakers filled with moldering concoctions.
One side of the main room functions as a rudimentary gym, the other half as a science lab. A holo-chalkboard on the lab side holds numerous equations and plans.
Mermaid and Gold spar in the middle of the gym mat. Mermaid flips Gold onto his back, and I note that his left eye is already swollen shut. Mermaid sees us first. When her expected blow doesn’t come, Gold turns his head.
He lets out a long, appreciative whistle. “Damn, girl. Damn!”
“So that’s where the cams went,” Mermaid says.
I see Sequoia in the lab, surrounded by a pile of electronic equipment and garments. He must be working on the uniforms. He looks up from his project, and his mouth actually drops open in surprise.
I look around, searching for The Professor. Sequoia mutely points to a side door. To his credit, Shine holds his head high. He knows the cams are recording everything, that the editors will overlay this scene with dramatic music and probably keep the shot zoomed in on his face. I maintain my severe expression as I lead Shine to the side door and pound on it.
“What? What?” a voice squawks from within. The surprise sounds genuine. Leo didn’t tell Gerald I was coming. Smart. He wants to capture the real reaction.
“Delivery,” I say.
“This better be good, I’m right in the middle of…” the door slides open. Gerald stares at Shine and then at me. For a moment, confusion reigns on his face, but then I see the flicker of recognition. He knows who I am. After another second of shock, he recovers deftly, shifting from my bumbling landlord into one of the most revered and respected vils Biggie LC has ever known.
“Well, well, well,” he says, a gloating smile on his lips.
“Caught him snooping around upstairs looking for the lair,” I say. I struggle for a clever chemistry pun, but come up empty. Shine is right. I do need more practice. “He didn’t know what hit him,” I say lamely, but make up for it by giving Shine another shock. He stiffens but doesn’t fall.
In a grand flourish, I hold out the handle of the Torch Whip to The Professor. “I figure Beacon will be anxious to find her little pet when she discovers he’s missing.”
“Indeed, indeed.” The Professor gently takes the handle of the whip and studies the device. The other henchmen have gathered around us. Sequoia has a hopeful smile on his face. Gold smirks. Mermaid glowers. I wonder if she’s the traitor who colluded with Shine. Those two would make quite the power couple.
“Beacon is out there somewhere, a little electron zipping around,” The Professor says. He hits Shine with a higher shock, enough to make the sidekick fall to his knees. “And you will be my proton, pulling her right into my grasp.”
“She will never… fall into your trap,” Shine grunts.
“Let us see about that.” The Professor lets out a giddy laugh, then looks behind me. “How was that?”
“Excellent,” Leo says. I turn and see that he has entered the lair. He probably took the elevator down right after Shine and me. “But there’s one more thing you have to do.”
He meets my eyes, and I feel a different kind of electrical charge travel down my spine. Buddha’s back hair. My brain despises Leo for being a soul-rotted producer, but obviously my body hasn’t gotten the memo.
The Professor looks me over and glances at Leo. “Do we have the budget for it?”
“We’ll find a way.”
The Professor nods, then composes himself. I’ve kept my expression neutral, not sure which parts of this scene Leo will keep and which he’ll edit away.
The Professor grins at me. “Science is often an inexact practice,” he says. “Humans can miscalculate. They may not recognize an element’s true potential. It seems I have underestimated you, my dear.”
I give him a curt nod.
The Professor sticks out his hand. “Will you join this grand experiment as my henchman?”
Here it is. What I need. What I dread. What I’ve sold my soul for. After the slightest hesitation, I reach over Shine’s bowed head and shake The Professor’s hand.
My new boss smiles. “Welcome to the team, Iron.”
Stay Tuned For… How to Defeat a Hero
Alice is officially a henchman for The Professor, but that’s just the beginning of her adventures! Stay tuned for the next book in the series, HOW TO DEFEAT A HERO. In this book, Alice gets into her henchman groove, learns to play nice (or maybe not) with her fellow henchmen, and generally does her best to live a life of crime (all for the ratings, of course). Get a sneak peek of the first chapter at the very end of this book, after the Author’s Note. (This is an early draft, so please be kind.)
Get Bonus Character Interviews from Then Henchman’s Survival Guide Series!
In the meantime, I have a special goodie on offer for my super Henchman fans. I was recently given the amazing opportunity to interview The Professor and all of his henchmen. He even surprised me by letting me interview his surprise (and involuntary) guest, Shine! By signing up to my email list, you can get a free copy of these bonus interviews. You’ll also receive important updates, like when the new book is coming out.
Learn more about your favorite henchmen and their villainous boss.
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A bonus collection of character interviews from The Henchman’s Survival Guide Series
Author’s Note
Wow, so here we are, at the end of HOW TO BECOME A HENCHMAN. This was quite a long journey for me, and there were some points where I wasn’t sure I’d make it. Two years ago, I wrote the fifth and final book in my first fiction series, GIRL WITH BROKEN WINGS. It took me six years to complete that series, and I was eager to start something new.
I thought of a fresh idea that absolutely nobody was writing about: superheroes.
And by “nobody,” I mean everybody.
Still, I knew I had to write about superheroes. Why? Because I love them. I spent my precious youth glued to the TV, watching X-Men cartoons, collecting trading cards, and spending my scant allowance on comic books. I used to wish with all my little heart that I could have powers like Storm or Rogue (even Jubilee – that’s how desperate I got). Superheroes were special people. They possessed glistening muscles and huge boobs and perfect bub
ble butts. More importantly, no matter how wounded and beaten they were, they somehow got up again and saved all of us lesser humans.
Then I grew up and got cynical. As I watched my favorite characters hit the big screen, something odd happened. Instead of worshipping the beautiful heroes, I started to think about everyone else. I realized that it must be hard to be a normie living in Gotham or Metropolis. Wouldn’t it get tiring when the Joker robs the bank for the 15th time, or when Magneto kicks you out of your home because he wants to create a mutant haven?
A spark that would one day turn into Alice was born.
When I decided to write about this book, I knew I wanted to create a different kind of superhero story. The first thing I determined was that my “superhero” story wasn’t actually going to be about superheroes. I wanted to follow the little guy or little girl. I was going to write about henchmen.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the world in which I wanted to write, and honestly, I kept coming back to a central challenge. Guns. Unless you’re The Man of Steel, any superhero can be dispatched pretty easily with a bullet. What’s the point of having all the powers in the world if a SWAT sniper can take you out as soon as you turn your back?
I realized that I needed to write in a world without guns, where heroes were welcomed and supported. Of course, every good hero needs a villain, so this world would also have to support villains without sending the National Guard after every crook with a creepy mask.
All of these plot challenges twisted and turned in my mind for a while, and eventually the lightbulb went off. My characters could be part of a superhero reality show. No, that was thinking too small. What would happen if an entire town was turned into a semi-reality show where heroes and villains got their own shows and cultivated their own fans.
I’m not exactly sure how this whole story moved into the future. But it did, and I’m still wondering about that, because it added tons of research into the equation.