Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel (33 page)

Nevermore and Geode brought food and were clearly concerned.

Ghost Girl didn’t bring food, but I could see her standing in the doorway, scanning me, leaving.

Carnivore crawled on my bed and straddled me, his face inches from mine, saying that as soon as I was well enough to stand, he’d give me exactly what I deserved.

His presence here was the ultimate cosmic joke, our punishment for doing this, probably.

Trojan Fox didn’t come around and beat me again, even though I kind of wished she would. I certainly deserved it.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Showstopper, wherever you are, if you’re a ghost or a spirit or whatever, or if you’re in hell with Odigjod’s folks, please know I’m sorry. Please. I… I wouldn’t trade places with you. I don’t want to die, but you gotta know, I didn’t want you to die either. You were my friend… I’m so, so sorry…

That damned clip again. The buildings dropping like dominoes. Helicopters falling out of the sky. The whole world exploding.

“You know, you got really lucky there.”

Someone new, but not quite, stood in my doorway. He set a bag on my nightstand and sat at the foot of the bed.

“With that much power released, you’re lucky you aimed it all at the Golem. Then it all went up. Otherwise you’d have killed everyone in the building, but like this… well, you live to villain another day.”

Adam.

Of course he’d say I was lucky.

He wasn’t there.

I rolled away from him. He sighed.

“We didn’t know. You… you do believe me, don’t you?”

I didn’t say anything or roll back over.

“They didn’t trust us, if you can believe that. They thought that because we never took you down, that a different approach was required. That’s why we weren’t there; they didn’t tell us. They just wanted to capture you, in private, and be done with you like they were done with all the other villains. They don’t have vision. They don’t see your necessity.”

“What about Shooting Star and Photon and the others?” I said, my first words in days.

“They were scared. Once we all found out what the other heroes were doing, they thought it might be safer to eliminate you before anyone could be interrogated and reveal Kayfabe. Thankfully, you got away before that could be an issue.”

“Odigjod didn’t. Showstopper didn’t.”

He brushed this off, almost casually: “Casualties of war. They can be replaced, though. Anyone can.”

He must have heard how loud the silence in the room got because he playfully pushed my thigh. “Except you, of course! You’re Apex Strike! What would we do without you?”

Good question. What
would
they do without me? All my doubt, all my fear fell into that one question.

All of it twisted together into an even crazier one.

“Do I belong here?” I asked.

Adam laughed. “What?”

“There were so many people in testing who were better with their powers or smart enough not to get their friends killed, and they got cut. Did I really earn my place here?”

“Aidan—”

“DID I?” I didn’t mean to focus, but everything in the room lifted off the ground a few inches. At once, I could feel everything. I knew the texture of the wallpaper, the patches of carpet that were wearing thinnest, the pitiful death throes of dust mites as I crushed them in midair. Helios’s breathing quickened—in fear, I was sure—though whether it was for what I had done or what he was going to say next, I didn’t know. The field he made around himself moments later only kept that mysterious.

Realizing what happened, I dropped everything.

“You… you…” he said, his voice sounding remarkably like it did that night I helped him deal with Adriana’s body. “You were guaranteed a spot on the team. You were so famous, how couldn’t we? You and the imp, because Crystal Skull had a deal with the devil he had to make good on, and the mech, because the kids love ’em; you all had a free pass. We had to put you through the motions, but there was no way you wouldn’t make the team.”

Anger boiled inside of me as I faced him. “And because I made it, because I was so famous, you had me lead this team? You had me lead us into a deathtrap? You had me lose two of my best friends just so we could bust fucking
Carnivore
out of prison?”

Some of his composure regained, Adam shrugged. “These things happen.”

“Get out.”

“Aidan…”

“GET OUT!” I roared. Pain exploded in my chest. Every muscle and nerve in my body screamed as I thrashed.

Pulling the Creeper control from his pocket, Adam calmly said, “I really think you’re forgetting who holds the power in this relationship, Aidan.”

He let the Creeper do its thing as he stood up and brushed himself off.

“I know you’re upset, and that’s completely understandable. We’ll be providing grief counselors to better help you cope. I’ve also made you a care package,” he said, pointing to the bag on my nightstand. “It has some Montage, some E, some coke, some other party favors, a bottle of rather fine whiskey, and the numbers for a few very fine, very famous ladies who would be more than happy to make your acquaintance. We’re sorry for overreacting over the whole Circus incident. Our big plans for you guys are coming real soon, and we want you to be happy again. We want to be
friends
again. As soon as something shiny comes along, people will forget about the attack on Amber City and we’ll go out and party like there’s no tomorrow.”

Finally, right as he walked to the door, he turned the Creeper off. I curled up into a pained, fetal position.

“I’m sorry for all of this, but in the end, I think you’ll understand,” Adam said, closing the door behind him.

The tears came easily. I don’t know if they were in fear, or pain, or that… what was that… betrayal? Yeah, I guess I felt like I’d been betrayed by Adam. He wasn’t my friend. Friends wouldn’t do that. Maybe, no, probably I knew that all along. I’m sure of that now, at least. Always that one little voice in the back of my mind reminding me that he was a superhero and I was a supervillain. I found that voice easy to ignore, usually, but now, with what happened to Showstopper and Adriana…

It can be like it was before. It can be so you don’t have to hear that voice again.

I looked at the paper bag on my nightstand.

It called to me.

Even remembering the drugged out feeling of sick, even remembering the awful detoxing, I could feel the pull of that bag. I wanted to disappear in it.

I forced myself to sit up, gripping the edge of my bed.

I looked at the bag.

The door.

Fuck.

I padded down the hallway, now wearing boxers and a bathrobe. I tried reassuring myself that what I’d done was for the best, but enough of me felt that it was a shame to have flushed so much quality merchandise down the toilet. I just had to remind myself that I needed a clear head for what was to come next.

I made it about halfway down the hallway before Carnivore attacked me.

He leapt out of his room, his mouth curled in a wicked smile and his claws out.

“Finally,” he growled. I flicked my wrist and he flew back into his room. I heard something shatter.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said, continuing down the hall.

That should’ve been the end of it. But then he charged again, quietly enough that I couldn’t turn to face him. He knocked me facedown onto the rug, claws dug into my back through the robe.

“You don’t have time for this?” he snarled.

“No, I don’t,” I said, trying to push off the ground. He pinched two of his claws at the base of my neck.

“
I
should have been
you
. You don’t deserve everything they’ve given you.”

“Way ahead of you there,” I responded.

I wanted to laugh. I remembered, way back when I had feared and hated him more than anything else in the world. With everything that had happened since then, he didn’t seem so bad.

Even with this, though, he was still pretty bad, especially with his claws wrapped around my spine.

“Any last words?” he hissed.

“He doesn’t need any.”

His yip was high and full of surprise when he was ripped from my back by the spectral sailing ship (
Grampus
?) projected from Nevermore’s chest. Geode stood beside her, his arms, chest, and shoulders encased in crystals as he charged Carnivore, grabbing him by the throat and pinning him to the wall.

“Now you haven’t been around lately, so we’re going to cut you some slack this time,” Geode said.

“But we are tired of taking your shit, you American piece of trash,” Nevermore added, then looking to me. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I said.

“Fuck… all… of… you…” Carnivore choked out.

Nevermore laughed. “That won’t be easy when we’ve cut off your cock and fed it to some dinosaurs, will it? Geode, pull off his pants.”

Geode transformed his face into a terrifying, crystalline smile, placing his free hand on Carnivore’s leg. Nevermore recalled the spectral ship only to send out that black, stylized orangutan with the straight razor in its hand.

“You can’t do this!” he howled, looking down at me. “Apex Strike, tell them…”

Nevermore helped me to my feet. I brushed myself off and shrugged. “What can I say? We’re supervillains.”

If it was even possible, his eyes went wider.

“You don’t get to fuck with us anymore,” Geode said, his voice more gravelly as even more of him transformed into crystal. “We’ve seen so much, done so much together, that now, we are one. You fuck with one of us, you fuck with
all
of us.”

Carnivore yowled, “You can’t do this! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!”

Nevermore rolled her eyes. “Some never learn. Make him a cage?”

“With pleasure,” Geode said, tossing Carnivore roughly back into his room. He shot crystal spikes from his hands that rapidly grew into a wall, blocking off the door.

“Thanks,” I said to Nevermore.

She smiled. “It’s not a problem. We were going to do that soon anyway. You just gave us an excuse to make it sooner.”

“Well, I’m just glad I could be your excuse then,” I said. “Have you seen Ghost Girl and Trojan Fox?”

“Yes, they are both in the laboratory.”

“Excellent,” I said, storming off down the hall.

She quickly caught up to me. I didn’t really want her to come, but I also didn’t want to risk any of the consequences of telling her no, especially when she was in a cock-cutting mood.

She got right to the point. “I know we haven’t talked in a long time. And I know, maybe, we never really talked at all. And I just wanted to apologize to you for everything.”

“You mean for getting railed by all those superheroes?”

She frowned. “I meant more for using you. For using everyone. When we fucked, I fucked your mask, not you. I thought if I fucked someone with status, that it’d raised me up too, but it really just cheapened us both. It’s not easy to see something like that, but I have, and I wanted to apologize. Will you forgive me?”

“Sure,” I said again. I thought this might have gotten her off my back. Instead this only made her angry.

“You know, you are really terrible at this! You were supposed to say, ‘
I would forgive you if there was something that needed forgiving, but there was not because I was using you like a whore to make myself feel better, too!
’ Then we would laugh, smile, maybe hug, and start learning what each other is like as a human being, no?”

In her rage, her tattoos almost seemed to all burst from her skin as one.

“Look… you’re probably right about that, and this is something that I really think deserves serious conversation. But right now, just this second, I’m dealing with some shit that’s bigger than you, and me, and all of us, and I really don’t think I’ll be able to talk to you like you deserve to be talked to until I get this whole thing sorted out. I don’t think I’m going to be as constructive a talker as you need until I can figure out just what’s going on, and how I gotta deal with it.”

It wasn’t a great speech, nor was it enough to make Nevermore truly happy, but it was enough to get her to say, “We will talk about this later?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because I need to make my amends to move on, and you are the only one here I can do that with.”

“Well that’s—wait… you’re doing Twelve Steps?”

“Fuck no. That would mean believing in a merciful God. I’m thinking more like five or six steps. If I can get most of them done with you, though, then I’m fine.”

She laughed. I laughed. Neither laugh was all that bright and cheerful, but it was progress.

She didn’t have to see me all the way to the lab after that.

I didn’t know how I felt about Nevermore anymore, not really, not beyond thinking she was hot, and broken, now that some shit experiences had helped clear my eyes, but I was pretty sure I liked her in a non-sexual way too (though that was still there, and nice).

It’s funny the sorts of things grief will make you realize.