Refraction (7 page)

“Well, we’ve got five minutes left to develop and execute a brilliant plan to save the entire city,” Max said. “And so far Mom and I have come up with nothing. Other than paying for every person to take a cab far away from here, I don’t see how we’re going to pull this off.”

Crush grinned at him. “The thing is, you might
be
a supervillain, but we’re used to
fighting
supervillains. And we have an idea.”

“THEIR PLAN
is ‘just go out and talk to him for a while, it’ll be fine, I promise’? Mom, that’s a terrible plan,” Max whispered urgently. “We have to come up with something, we can’t die before I ever even take over my own municipality, we’ve worked too hard to—”

A woman screamed. Panic erupted around her like a wave, people running and tripping over steps, dropping their briefcases and bags. It was too late, then. No choice but to stand and take what was coming.

Decay emerged from the mob, the crowd parting around him like a school of scared fish. His cape waved dramatically behind him in the morning breeze, which was extremely annoying to Max, considering that Decay probably hadn’t even checked the weather forecast or arranged for a wind machine. It sucked when things worked out perfectly for people who hadn’t earned it.

“Catalyst, Dynaman,” Decay greeted them self-importantly. “I should have expected you. How did you find us?”

“Doctor Decay, please,” she scoffed. “I fabricated the parts for that machine in my own basement. I soldered every microchip and wire with my own two hands. Surely you didn’t expect it to turn on without calling home.”

The courtyard emptied, leaving just the three of them in front of the station. Where had Decay left the device, and who was with it? Max clenched his jaw and steeled himself to stick with Crush’s plan.

“Yes,” Decay mused, “that was an interesting design feature. Tell me, Catalyst, why would you build a thirty-minute warm up period on a doomsday device?
Before
the eighteen-minute firing sequence?”

“The end of civilization as we know it should never be a rash decision,” Catalyst said, “which you would understand if you truly knew what it meant to be a member of the Injustice League.”

Decay smiled condescendingly. “You are such a peach, Catalyst, really. But… an outdated peach—going a bit soft around the edges. A bit less appetizing. The people need something new. Something fresher! With new ideas and a new ideology. A stronger, more forward-thinking type of peach.”

“Like you?” Max asked, sighing. This was a pitfall for all supervillains: self-idolization. You had to be a true believer to be a supervillain (or a superhero), but you couldn’t be a true believer in
yourself
. There was too much feedback with all that passion directed inward, and it just created a chain reaction of crazy. This was Supervillainy 101: don’t
be
an ideal,
have
an ideal.

“Like me,” Decay agreed. “See, you’re smart, Dynaman. I think you’ve got a lot of potential. Come join the victor before I destroy your entire family in my quest for world domination.”

“I would never work with you,” Max spat. “Real supervillains have integrity and self-respect. They don’t go to work for slimy, backstabbing corporations. Did Sheffield offer you a share of the profits, Decay? Are you working for
money
?”

Beside him, Catalyst gasped quietly. Only common criminals worked for cash. A supervillain had loftier aspirations. (If riches and wealth came incidentally in the course of achieving those aspirations, well… that was just a perk of a job well done.)

“How dare you?” Decay seethed. “What are you but a child? What understanding have you about the true reach of my power? Sheffield and his cure are a side note of my own symphony. I’ve turned your simple device into a true catalyst, ha-ha, of change. When the city is brought to its knees, crazed with panic and fear, dragged low by sickness—”

Max wasn’t going to stand for this. “You’ve made your last mistake, Decay. If you think for one second—”

“—and uncertain future, its infrastructure tied up in its own helplessness, the people will be—”

“—the League isn’t going to stop you. You’re in for a big surprise, because the people have to choose their—”

“—desperate for leadership! A strong icon to guide them and lift them up, to pull them through these dark days. A—”

“—next tyrannical leader of their own free will, not under threat of terror and death—”

“—benevolent God, to place a balm on their tired souls.”

“—and I’ll never let you take that away!”

Something shifted behind Decay, a blurred movement in the corner of Max’s eye. He kept his gaze on Decay. Catalyst reached out and placed her hand on Max’s shoulder, squeezing his neck slightly. If they were all about to become infected with an epidemic disease, at least he’d have made his mom proud for a moment. A cold comfort, but undoubtedly better than Decay had ever managed.

Decay spread his hands in front of him with a grin. “There’s nothing you can do, Dynaman. My plan is already in motion. My minions have surrounded the station, and the device is moving into place. There’s nothing you can do to stop m—oof!”

Crush tackled Decay to the ground, tumbling them both heroically across the square. Decay stumbled to his feet, but before he could run, Crush caught him with an uppercut that knocked him backward over a railing in a really impressive arc. It would have been almost comical except for the fact that the device could blow any second and infect the entire metropolitan population with a deadly virus.

Mr. Magnificent jogged out of the station into the sunlight. He crossed the courtyard quickly and came to a stop in front of Catalyst and Max, sparing a glance at Crush, who was tying Decay’s arms behind his back with his own (synthetically reinforced, if it was up to League code) cape.

“I’ve got police on cleanup,” he announced. “The goons in and around the station are all hog-tied, and I managed to jam the device with five minutes to spare. That’s a good safety you built in there, son, pulling any lever out of order making the whole thing jam up. Ha-ha!” He punched Max on the shoulder companionably.

“Ha-ha,” Max repeated. “Thanks.” Crush’s dad was a bit too much of a true, through-and-through superhero for Max to really feel comfortable around him. Also… that other thing. Where he seduced his son to a life of villainy.
Awkward
.

Across the courtyard Decay shouted, “Curse you all! You’ll regret this!” He screamed furiously as the police chief shoved him into the back of a cruiser.

“That man has no style,” Catalyst sighed.

“Seriously, bring the device in and muscle it to the platform? Completely uninspired. This was the perfect opportunity for the pianist and the hot air balloon,” Max agreed. “He didn’t even bring in acrobats.”

Crush laughed. His face was streaked with dirt, and he had the beginnings of a black eye. “Lucky for us, even the least flashy villain can still be counted on to talk himself into defeat.”

Wait a minute. Max turned to Crush suspiciously. “Are you saying you set us up to monologue at each other long enough for you to quietly take down the security team and then Decay while he was still explaining his master plan to us?”

Crush spread his hands. “You’re welcome.” He winked.

Max sputtered helplessly. Unbelievable! The attitude!

Mr. Magnificent crossed his arms proudly. “Well, that’s a job well done, team,” he announced.

Catalyst leaned against the helibot as it loaded the doomsday device into its bay. “And he didn’t even find the internal anterior emergency switch.”

Mr. Magnificent blinked. “You built an emergency switch?”

“Just in case things got serious!” she protested.

Crush laughed nervously. “Well, you built a kill switch too, right?”

Catalyst coughed and Max cringed. “That was on our next round of design improvements.”

That definitely was not something they had done. It’s not like they thought he’d ever actually get through the initialization sequence in the first place to need one!

“We should head home,” Catalyst said. “The police are happy to leave us alone for now, but I wouldn’t count on that for long. You two would be smart to do the same. You heroes might not seem quite as heroic as before.” She eyed the news helicopters overhead pointedly.

Mr. Magnificent nodded and grasped Crush’s shoulder. “We stand by our decision and our convictions. We hope the public will understand our actions.”

Doubtful. Max tugged at his belt nervously. “Hey, Mom, maybe we could give them a ride home. Just this once. Because, you know… traffic. Lots of law enforcement. And we have a helicopter. We shouldn’t take any chances, is all I’m saying.”

His mom looked around. The police holding crowds of bystanders behind tape, the wail of sirens approaching—the nervous glances everyone was shooting at them. All four of them.

“All right,” she said. “Just this once. Into the back with you. Head and hands stay inside the vehicle, and
don’t touch any buttons
.”

MONDAYS GOT
a bad rap sometimes. The death of a weekend, the onset of tedium and monotony. A no-good, very bad day waiting to happen. Napoleon’s squire once cost the French army five hundred men when he let half the army’s horses escape the night before the Russians attacked (on a Monday).

Max’s was going pretty well, though.

He kicked his ankles idly against the side of the building he was perched on, his bag of chips crinkling as he fished through the broken bits. The sun blazed down on him, warming his shoulders beneath the crisp breeze you could never escape at the top of an office building.

“Chip?” He held the bag out to Crush, who grabbed it and upended the remains into his mouth with an obnoxious grin.

“Thanks,” Crush said, spitting crumbs everywhere like a heathen and ignoring Max’s groan.

“Why am I even here?” Max complained. “The company is atrocious.”

Crush leaned over, pressing his shoulder to Max’s. “The view is pretty good, though.”

“I—uh—” Max sputtered, his face heating as Crush started to laugh.

“I meant
that
,” he said, gesturing at the street, where twenty stories below them CEO Wayne Sheffield was being taken into federal custody pending an investigation of his company records. Max had read he was facing charges of fraud, conspiracy to commit murder, and treason. If they were lucky, he’d face the UN for biological warfare.

“I mean….” Crush said, leaning in again, “I meant both. But right then—look, look, they knocked his head on the car door!” He laughed again, jostling Max as he pointed.

Max sighed happily, watching the police cruiser take off with Sheffield slumped in the backseat—no doubt weighed down by defeat, regret, and the judgment of an entire metropolis.

“I, um, I feel kind of weird about luring you to the dark side,” Max said after a moment. “Are you doing okay with that?”

Crush shrugged, smiling. “It’s cool.” At Max’s skeptical face, he continued. “It’s like that thing in physics last week. Where light bends if you change the environment it’s in. Refraction. You just… altered my environment, and I moved where it made the most sense to be.”

Max swallowed and ducked his chin. “Well, I’m still sorry you had to drop out of high school,” he said. He watched the last police car pull away, turning off its lights with one final, triumphant blip.

Crush nodded. “The public can’t decide whether they want to knight us or burn us at the stake. I never thought about what you had to deal with.”

Max snorted. “Well, they pretty much just want to burn us at the stake, so it’s much more straightforward.”

“But you fight for them anyway.” Crush turned toward Max, swinging a leg over to straddle the ledge. He scooted forward until his knees brushed Max’s hip. “Even though they don’t understand.”

Max looked down at his hands and did not move his legs at all. “Somebody’s got to do it, and I have an awesome robot lab in my basement.” He shrugged. “And now you can help.”

Crush nodded, then looked out over the city. “Dad won’t sign on with the Injustice League. And I don’t think I want him to.”

“No,” Max agreed. “I see you as more freelance.”

“Vigilantes?”

“Less paperwork,” Max offered.

“Decay is still in the containment center in Antarctica, right?”

Max nodded. Even the Injustice League had to manage its bad press somehow, and, really, they had standards to uphold. “He’s stuck there until he finds a way to mobilize the penguins and escape.”

Crush laughed. “So, forever, then.”

“At least a year and a half,” Max conceded. Birds were notoriously hard to unite, especially in the southern hemisphere.

“Um.” Crush was looking at him oddly. “Are you ser—never mind.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “We should probably get home. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of homework for me to catch up on, even though I’m not a student anymore.”

“A supervill—
vigilante
is always a student,” Max insisted, “forever bettering your m—no hey wait, um, wait.” He grabbed Crush’s arm, pulling him back down on the ledge when he tried to get up. “I just, um, I wanted to say thank you. For believing me. You didn’t have to. Most people wouldn’t have.”

Max reached out and, totally failing to work up the courage to grab Crush’s hand, wrapped his fingers in his sleeve instead. “I just think—no, no, shh!” he insisted when Crush opened his mouth. “Just—shush. At first I thought you were a boring, blond automaton, and then I thought maybe you were smart enough to be friends with—ssh!—and then I thought you were an automaton again, and I was really upset about it, but I was wrong. You might be blond and a little too sun-kissed for me to believe it’s natural, but I’ve never had someone overturn their entire socio-political worldview for me, and I just wanted to say I really appreciate it. So… thank you.”

Crush was smiling at him and it was embarrassing, and frankly Max had just worked too hard on that to get derailed by stupid
feelings
, so Max tugged Crush’s sleeve and pressed their lips together—
softly
, because Max was nervous, but he wasn’t a total wreck.