Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel (29 page)

“No, I don’t want you to. I
need
you to. For me. For
us
. You have no idea how much of Kayfabe I hold together, do you? How many of our plans for you require me? And that without me, it’ll start to fall apart, and maybe you and your friends will be left alone, and then be caught by bigger and more powerful superheroes without us to protect you?” he said, gravely.

“Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m on your side, you don’t have to threaten me,” I said, patting him on the back. He jolted away, as if my hand were electrified, before smiling unevenly.

“I’m sorry, man, this is just… this is just fucked. You can understand why I’m a little paranoid, right?” I’d never accidentally murdered my girlfriend in a coked-up rage and then asked someone to help me cover it up, but I had an idea of where he was coming from.

So I surrounded my fist with focus, and punched him in the jaw.

He flew through the air, smashing into the wall, shattering his framed gold record from the time the Protectors recorded that anti-domestic violence benefit song.

“I WASN’T READY YET!” he yelled, spitting out blood.

“I’m sorry!”

“But I like your enthusiasm,” he continued, laughing. “Come on, do it again. We really have to trash this place.”

So we trashed his place. I threw him around, smashing him into walls, floors, the ceiling. At his suggestion I broke his nose, a few of his ribs, and his right wrist. He blasted holes in his walls with energy bursts (and used them to eliminate all his drugs) while I ripped up the floor and the ceiling and flung pieces of furniture. Adam didn’t want her body messed up too much, so he folded her into the fridge. Then he got the idea for me to hurl it out on the front lawn with her still inside.

“I can see it now,” he said. “Grainy, black-and-white picture of the fridge on its side, right next to my statue, the door cracked open slightly, her bloodstained hand poking out. Top trending, cover of every newspaper and magazine… somebody’s going to win some awards for that one.”

You can never say that Adam lacked vision.

We’d just tossed the fridge through his front wall and stood staring out at the road a good distance away. It was late, so there were few signs of life, but you could see a couple of lights on at the parked paparazzi cars.

“They’re probably wondering what the hell is going on. They don’t know that they’re gonna get the story of their careers tonight,” Adam said, cradling his shattered wrist.

“So, are you going to call this in?”

“No, I’m emotionally traumatized by what I just went through.” He started snorting heavily, forcing more tears to come. “This is how they’re going to find me. Kneeling by the refrigerator. Crying. Calling her name.”

“Showing that you’re just like everyone else. I like it.”

“Still better than them, but, yeah, that’s the idea.”

There was blood and dust on my hands. I rubbed them on my cape, not that that helped terribly much. I stared at the refrigerator, at the statue. Something nagging just pulled at me, something I had to get out.

“Hey Adam? What were you guys fighting about?”

“We’re pals, Aidan, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then don’t ask me that question again.”

“Sure,” I said, not sure if I should be worried or calmed by his smile.

“Cool. Thanks. It’s just… it’s rough. It’s love. It’s life. It’s all so complicated.”

Even with that nagging uncertainty, I knew that was all I’d get.

“Come on, let’s get into character,” he said.

I nodded, closing the visor of my helmet and running down his driveway.

I wondered what this would look like in the morning. Though I knew I was sad about what had happened to Adriana, I couldn’t help but feel that my career was back on track.

#Supervillainy101: The Stereotypes

In the early 70s, when the War on Villainy really started to kick into gear, the Protectors began receiving criticism for their lack of diversity, in that most of it—and its subteams—membership were made up of heroes from the United States, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union. Seeking to improve public relations on this front, a new subteam, “The Worldwide Protectors,” was created. Consisting of Zulu Warrior, Comanche Princess, Dark Djinn, Miss Mekong, Lady Jaguar, and Maui, these teenaged heroes dressed in costumes based on their traditional heritages were supposed to usher in a new, “globally conscious era of heroism,” according to their press releases.

Not long after they were introduced, the public gave them a new nickname: the Stereotypes.

Their costumes were bad jokes, their stage personalities were poorly written, and with all the money and time put into promoting the team, the Protectors kept them far away from the front lines, making them the punchline of pretty much every tabloid and late night host. After two years of this, and rumors that the team might be disbanded, the Worldwide Protectors went vigilante and started fighting crime on their own time.

Of course, with vigilantism outlawed, they were quickly branded as villains and were all promptly taken down by the Protectors.

Ever since, the Protectors have tried to pretend that this team never existed.

#LessonLearned:
Sometimes, even superheroes make mistakes.

19

PUBLIC RELATIONS

I’d forgotten how bright the War Room could get. Dozens of small holographic projectors lined the walls, allowing heroes on the other side of the world to walk among us and explain our missions while transporting us to an almost video game quality recreation of where these missions would take place. As usual, Fifty-Fifty gave the main portion of our briefing, while today he was backed up by Helios and Shooting Star.

We had a unique opportunity coming up, Fifty-Fifty told us. Word through the grapevine was that one of our old teammates had some high-powered liberal lawyer who wanted to give them their day in court. While there wasn’t word on just which teammate it was, with the hearing set in the Old Amber City Courthouse (a nine-story, 50s-style office building that would make an easy target), the chance to free them would make for great publicity. Security there was poor, and aside from the SWAT team escorting the prisoner, resistance would be minimal. It would probably be the easiest Black Cape Job we would ever have; a perfect way to get back in the game before working us up to some of the big plans they had ahead.

Easy. I liked the sound of that.

Now that we’d mostly succeeded in detoxing, the itch to do something big was coming back.

I wanted to be Apex Strike and play supervillain with my friends again. But, as usual, leave it to Trojan Fox to throw a wrench in things.

Right as Fifty-Fifty was finishing up, she raised her hand. This wasn’t unusual; Trojan Fox was a stickler for details and would always ask at least a dozen more questions than any of us would think of. They always turned out to be good questions, but it still got annoying.

“What are we going to do about Jimmy?” she asked.

This made the heroes chuckle, slightly. Fifty-Fifty said, “Jimmy’s been dealt with.”

“
Dealt with
like he’s stuck in the Tower
dealt with
, or
dealt with
like buried in a shallow grave
dealt with
?” she asked.

“The Tower, ’course,” Shooting Star said.

“We’re not animals,” Helios added.

“That’s up for debate,” Trojan Fox muttered, glaring at him. She wasn’t the only Offender who hated Helios for making me take the fall for Adriana’s death, but she was the one who hid her contempt the worst.

“Excuse me?” Fifty-Fifty asked.

“Nothing,” she said, toying around with her tablet until one of the walls exploded with pictures of a burning school, charred skeletons, and an idiot with a grin on his face screaming how awesome he was.

I was really getting sick of seeing him.

Adam, Adriana, and I were the top trending news story for four days after her death. There was another wave of stories about how terrible Apex Strike was, more mourning for a superhero’s lost girlfriend, her funeral, and lots of footage of a teary Adam, mourning her and vowing to bring me to justice.

And then Jimmy had to knock us out of the top spot.

Jimmy Janks was a high school freshman from Pensacola, Florida. Everybody said he was a quiet kid who mostly kept to himself and played a lot of video games. Nobody expected him to come to school with his newfound pyrokinetic abilities and burn it to the ground. Almost three hundred people (299 to be exact) died in the inferno. He waited on the school’s front lawn, occasionally tossing fireballs at emergency personnel and giving interviews to the media until the Protectors opened a Tri-Hole and took him down. At the end, he was screaming and laughing and smiling so wide, you’d have thought he was crazy if his words weren’t so clear.

“THE NEW OFFENDERS KICK ASS! WOOO! IF YOU GUYS ARE RECRUITIN’, I AM
SO
IN! LOOK ME UP!”

After that, Adam, Adriana, and I were replaced by memorials to the lost kids and commentaries wondering if we, as supervillains, had gone too far in inspiring such a catastrophe. Talking heads argued that it was our duty to turn ourselves in to prevent further incidents, while others argued for more media responsibility, saying that the sensationalizing and glorification of our actions was the true danger (these voices were quickly shot down, since who wants to hear something
that
depressing?).

Trojan Fox followed up with another question. “I was wondering if there was anything we could do. Maybe put out a video denouncing Jimmy Janks’ actions, try and discourage other dipshits from attempting something similar again?”

The heroes got a good laugh at this.

“Now why would we want to do that?” asked Fifty-Fifty.

“Well, first off, because it makes us look bad. By saying nothing, we implicitly approve of what happened. And second, we do want to discourage uncontrolled villainy, don’t we? I mean, every act of supervillainy that is not perpetrated under your intelligent leadership runs a greater risk for tragedy than is acceptable, doesn’t it?”

“Yes and no,” Helios said.

Fifty-Fifty elaborated, speaking like he was reading off a script, “We do mourn for the unfortunate loss of life in this case, but we cannot have you trying to prevent it, because acts like this show the world how truly insidious your influence is. We need them to see that you are contagious, that you affect even the most innocent of children and transform them into monsters. So yes, their loss is tragic. We will shed our tears and we will throw benefit concerts. And we will be grateful, for they further remind people how desperately their heroes are needed to prevent things like this from happening again.”

“Even though you won’t,” Trojan Fox said.

Fifty-Fifty sighed. “Are we done here?”

“I suppose,” Trojan Fox said. The heroes looked like they would rather be rid of her. Then again, they always looked that way. If it wasn’t for her way with that mech suit, I’m sure they’d have gone drummer on her ages ago.

One by one the holographic projectors flickered out as the others left the room, studying their tablets. I was hoping Ghost Girl would wait up for me, but she was gone. She was still upset with me for what had happened at Helios’s mansion, but thankfully seemed even more pissed with him, so I was pretty sure she’d get over it if given enough time.

Them leaving early did give me one opportunity, though.

I ran up to Adam’s projection before it disappeared.

“Helios!” I called out to him.

“Hey Aidan, what’s up?” It was just the two of us now in the room.

We’d only talked a few times since that night at his estate. He’d always sounded calm, relieved, and occasionally even a bit giddy, in stark contrast to how he appeared on the news. He was a good actor. I doubted he was having trouble sleeping. He didn’t see Adriana joining the ever-growing list of dead people he’d known in his nightmares.

“I just… I just wanted to see how you were.”

“I’m great,” he said without hesitation. “Kind of glad for the media circus to move on. And I’ve already begun looking for a new place, so the timing on this worked out well.”

“How was the funeral?”

He shrugged. “It was a funeral. A lot of tears. A lot of black. You remember Venera, from Archnemesis Day? Yeah, we hooked up afterward.”

I had to be honest with him. “Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“Something about this… just doesn’t feel right to me. It’s like, eating me up inside even though I didn’t do anything, really, this time. You got any advice?”

He put a digital arm around my shoulder. “Aidan, Adriana was a great girl, really, and I had a lot of fun with her, but what’s done is done. She died. We gotta move on. And besides, she had her problems which you never saw. She was nosy as hell and damn near destroyed everything we’d worked for.”

“She did?” I asked. That was certainly news to me.

“Yeah, but she didn’t, so don’t go worrying your pretty little head off about it. Is there anything else?”

“I guess not.”

He smiled. “Good, ’cause I got a date with an Atlantean.”

His hologram blinked out, and suddenly I was in an empty, dark room. What he said should have comforted me; he was usually good at doing so. But why wasn’t it working this time? Why did I still have that nagging feeling of emptiness? Why didn’t his answers seem like enough?

Most importantly, when the hell did I become so curious?