Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel (19 page)

I couldn’t help asking, “So… how’d I do?”

“If it were up to me, I’d say you were in, but my vote only counts for so much,” he said.

“I know. Thanks, at least.”

He pulled the Tri-Hole generator from his pocket and opened one up before us.

“You know how this goes,” he said. “I really hope to see you on the team, because I had an awesome time today.”

“Me too,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand.

“Ah, come here,” he said, pulling me in for a bear hug. “Good luck. Hope to see you out in a cape soon.”

“Me too,” I said, looking at the glowing, crackling hole that floated a few feet before me. I was struck, briefly, with the crazy urge to make a run for it. He was tipsy, I could probably give him the slip, maybe even a good fight if I had to.
But then you wouldn’t have a chance at this life. You’d be a runaway your entire life, an enemy of the state and the heroes, and where’s the fun in that?

Feeling the Creeper twitch beneath my sternum confirmed my decision.

I stepped through the Tri-Hole.

I landed hard in a dark room. The floor was cold and hard. Marble. I could sense people around me.

Then there was a drum roll. A dramatic musical swell. Dim lights fading up, showing us in a large round room. A proud, male voice on a loudspeaker.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the world’s newest supervillain team: the New Offenders!”

There was applause, artificial, for our benefit I’m sure, but I could barely hold back my excitement.

A bright light before me illuminated first the flag of Indiana, almost hovering in midair, before shining on a glass tube beneath it that held a mannequin in a stylized and very cool, professional version of my Apex Strike suit.

“From the United States, hailing from the great state of Indiana… APEX STRIKE!”

A spotlight hit me. I cheered and jumped as the fake applause grew louder.

Another light illuminating a swirling orange, round flag. A glass tube holding a wax figure of a terrifying, green-furred demon.

“From the Third Circle of Hell… HELLSPAWN!”

The light then hit a teenage boy with spiky brown hair who quickly transformed back into Odigjod. He collapsed onto the ground, laughing and clapping.

“From the British Empire’s Realm of New Zealand… TROJAN FOX!”

The stylized silver and orange mech suit in the glass tube was as sleek and sexy as the name was awful. I was sure it’d give Firewall (Trojan Fox) a fit, but she just looked relieved. She had the beginning of a black eye, which when combined with her sparkly cocktail dress, bloodied knuckles, and new mechanical legs really had me wondering just what happened on her Archnemesis Day.

“From France… NEVERMORE!”

Nice.

“From Tokyo Prefecture, Japan… CIRCUS!”

I was indifferent toward Circus, but was sure he’d make for a fun teammate.

“From Uruguay… GEODE!”

Felix looked like he was ready to pass out.

That left one spot. I had a good feeling that it would be Ghost Girl. Everybody else I liked was here (well, minus Showstopper), so why wouldn’t they put her on the team? She was smart, she was sexy, and even a little creepy, everything they should have wanted in a supervillain.

“And finally… from the United States, hailing from the great state of Ontario… CARNIVORE!”

He raised his arms in the air and let out a primal roar when the light hit him.

My heart sank slightly. I liked Ghost Girl; I was really hoping to improve my sex with her too. But there was something more to that, wasn’t there? Something more than what happened that night. She was my friend. My best friend, probably. We may not always have agreed, but I always looked forward to my time with her.

I tried to put a good spin on it, I tried to think positively. I’d gotten what I’d wanted, and shouldn’t that have been enough?

After all, I’d made it.

I was a supervillain.

#Supervillainy101: Lairs

If you want to be a supervillain, you’re going to need a lair. Sure, some villains stayed mobile, but most of them were among the first captured during the War on Villainy. Lairs give you a place to take off your costume, relax, and enjoy your piles of money.

Of course, if you’re going to have a lair, you need to put some thought into it.

Don’t Operate Out of Your Home

The Skeleton Brothers and Crazy Cassie learned that, even with superpowers, urban apartment complexes and suburban condos (respectively) aren’t secure when the Protectors start bursting through the doors, walls, ceiling, and even floors if Muck was on duty. No amount of powers, guns, or guard dogs are going to keep them out when all you’ve got between them and your loot is some cheap drywall.

Don’t Be Too Clever

Sure, you might think camping out in an abandoned facility themed to your particular identity and power set may be fun, but whenever a clown-themed villain is on the loose, the first place the heroes will come looking is the abandoned playing card factory or amusement park.

Don’t Use Security Systems You Can’t Control

The Zombie King learned this one the hard way. His compound in central Nevada was well-fortified, and his army of ten thousand radioactive zombies was certainly dangerous (and radioactive). Of course, being zombies, they turned on him and his minions the moment they were unleashed (on live television, no less, when he was making a speech about how unbeatable he was). Since this problem more or less fixed itself and was still highly radioactive, the Protectors just put a fence around his territory and said they’d take care of it when the War was over. Budget reasons kept this from ever happening, but the Great Fence of the Zombie King is an impressive tourist destination to this day.

#LessonLearned:
Be sensible when choosing and setting up your lair.

#LessonLearned:
If you can’t or don’t want to be sensible, invest in a good force field.

11

THE NEW OFFENDERS

It was only after the lights came up, revealing us to be in the lush foyer of a mansion, that someone posed the obvious question.

“Where the fuck are we?” Carnivore asked.

“Death Manor. Other side of the island,” Odigjod said, touching the glass tube with his giant, wax counterpart inside, a look like awe on his tiny, terrible face. The image consultants were right to pick Hellspawn as a good villain name for him, but I’d never be able to think of him that way.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Odigjod did exploring on the other side of the force field in training. Curious what island was like. Saw the heroes fixing this place up.”

As usual, the imp never ceased to amaze.

“We’re still stuck here?” Carnivore said, running a hand through his coarse hair. “Son of a bitch.”

“Would you rather see the Tower’s miles of smiles?” Trojan Fox said, trying to readjust her torn dress.

“No,” Carnivore replied.

“Then stop bitching and lighten up. We’ve made the team. You don’t have to keep the macho bullshit up,” she said, climbing one of the nearby curving staircases. “We gotta have rooms here somewhere. I’m gonna find some real clothes and see if Professor Death’s lab is still intact! God knows that suit’s gonna need some work!”

She was only slightly unsteady on the mechanical legs her archnemesis must have given her, but they looked close enough to the real thing that she clearly didn’t mind.

Carnivore, Odigjod, and Circus soon went in search of the kitchen, leaving Nevermore, Felix, and myself.

Felix looked at his glass tube with less awe and more nervousness than Odigjod had, but his relief was plain.

“So, Geode, huh?” I said.

He shot me a faint smile. “Yes. The image consultants thought it would be best.”

“It’s cool. Strong. I could totally see that on a meme. Awesome name for a villain.”

“It would have been better for a hero.”

“But you’re not a hero.”

He sighed. “No, I guess I’m not. But I’m not in the Tower, either. That will have to do.”

“Want to check out the mansion?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I think I will find my room too and sleep. It has been a long month.”

With that he climbed the curving staircase and was quickly out of sight.

“I would like to check out the mansion,” Nevermore said. She was looking at a tablet, scrolling across what appeared to be a floor plan. “It looks quite luxurious.”

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

“This? I found it in a compartment beneath my costume, you should have one too.” She was right. I pulled out my tablet and turned it on, getting a cheerful message welcoming me to the rechristened “New Offenders Mansion,” and giving a long list of rules for our stay here that all ended with threats of us being sent to the Tower or having our Creepers (which would stay in us as long as we were villains) set off. The tablet couldn’t connect to the Internet (at least, not yet; Trojan Fox could probably fix that), but it did have detailed files on the mansion, our costumes, basically everything a supervillain could need.

There was no Tetris, but it was better than the tablet I had at home, so I wasn’t going to complain.

Nevermore looked gorgeous, in her usual goth sort of way. Her long-sleeved shirt covered up all her tattoos, but it, and her leather skirt for that matter, were tight enough to make it not matter. Besides, I’d already seen her naked a lot, but somehow seeing her clothed seemed hotter.

I wonder if her boobs feel the same, or better, than Ghost Girl’s.

That hurt to think about—more than I would have expected.

As usual, talking with Nevermore was a struggle. It wasn’t as easy to find common ground like it was with Ghost Girl (
stop it
), and we both got through talking about what had happened on our Archnemesis Days quickly, though we both got a laugh when she brought up how, in the middle of their high-end shopping trip, Morningstar had proposed a threesome with her husband.

“What’d you say?”

“I said I’d think about it.”

“Seriously?”

She shrugged, brushing some of that perfect black hair from her eye. “What? Morningstar is gorgeous, and have you seen Silver Shrike’s calendars? Stretched out on the beach, oiled and glistening and tanned…”

“Well, that’s not something I ever really put a lot of thought into.”

“You should,” she said. “I mean, not necessarily about Silver Shrike, because I know that’s not what you are interested in. I just meant… we could die at any time. One moment we’re swirling our capes around us, the next we are shot in the head by some security guard with superhero dreams. We have to live like we are dying tomorrow, and the opportunities provided to us now mean we could live a lot more excitingly than we could have before, no?”

Call it getting caught up in the moment, call it stupid, pent up frustration, or call it a switch that got flipped after having sex with Ghost Girl (
stop it!
), but I walked over to her and kissed her on the lips. She kissed me back, and though she tasted vaguely of liquor and tobacco, it was nice.

How many people have their first kiss after they’ve lost their virginity?

She smiled when we parted. “See, that’s the spirit.”

“What’s your name? I mean, your real name.”

She took a step back, her face not entirely pleasant, but reforming the smile quickly. “Nevermore.”

“But your—”

“It’s all that matters now, right?” she said. “Who we were,
what
we were, none of that matters anymore. Come on, let’s explore.”

And so, we ignored our problems together and explored our new lair. They must have refurbished the mansion to look a lot like it had in its heyday, because it was decked out with swinging 60s stylings, lots of bright colors, mirrors, fake potted plants, and even a couple go-go cages in the rec room (though the giant flatscreen and rack of game systems were nice additions as modernizations go).

It was when we got to the armory that we first got our hands on our new costumes, hanging in lockers.

“We should try them on,” she said.

“Sure!” I agreed, though I was indifferent to wearing more clothes now.

Our lockers were on opposite sides of the row, so we could not look at each other as we changed.

“This is much better than what I used to wear,” she said. “An old corset, tattered skirt, fishnet stockings and sleeves, cheap domino mask held on by string. It was what could be put together on a budget, but it made me look more like a cheap dominatrix. So glad I was not caught in it, or I’d have had to train in it.”

“Sounds hot.”

“It was, but was also quite uncomfortable.”

“Sounds better than what I had,” I said, trying to figure out just how the hell my costume was supposed to work.

“Have you ever committed a crime in high heels?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Then mine was not better than yours.”

Most of my new costume was a one-piece, formfitting black bodysuit with blue lightning bolt highlights made of some very flexible, very tough fabric I’d never seen up close before (Super-Spandex, most heroes call it), with a long zipper down the front and another smaller one at the crotch, which made me smile.

No more Spongeman problems!

After that, there were heavy, but comfortable boots, gloves, and odd bits of lightweight but near-indestructible plate armor for my shins, knees, wrists, shoulders, and chest. The chest plate (molded to make it look like I had awesome abs and pecs) had two crossed blue lightning bolts that stylishly formed the words
Apex Strike
. The cape, lighter and sturdier and more detachable than the one I’d made myself, clipped easily into the shoulder plates, leaving just the helmet.

I was hoping there’d be some way around it, but apparently that was a part of my image now.

The new helmet was simple, light and black, leaving my face open while sweeping back dramatically down my neck, like a samurai. Only once it was settled on my head and I started to think about how I was going to cover my face did I hear the mechanisms inside whir to life, covering my face in a dark, plastic-like visor that looked a lot like my motorcycle helmet once I got to see it in a mirror. Heads-up display information scrolled across the inside of the mask. When I thought it away, it disappeared. When I thought it back, it returned. When I thought to open and close the mask again, it did.