THE MASK COMES OFF

Hungover to the point of an imaginary vise grip squeezing at her temples, dreading the onslaught of attention and the eyes that will befall her, Bedevil hesitates at the entrance of the Houston Shrine. As soon as she enters, she’s done. She’ll lose her title. Her engram count has already been slipping over the last few days, as the news spread among the capes about what happened following the sting at Shortfin’s estate. And not just in Houston… all of the Vanguard saw that. She feels it.

It doesn’t matter. She has to convince her mother about Gabe. What he’d been through, what the Vanguard did to him, none of it represented their ideals. It was done in the shadows, by craven, evil men. If she can talk to her mother about reaching out to him… maybe this can all be fixed.

There’s no point delaying. Head held high, shoulders back, like they drilled into her at Basics. The same countenance that has carried her through all these years as Bedevil. She walks into the Houston Shrine, amid gawking adorants, the security officers, and of course the other capes, trying to ignore her stomach twirling around and around like a carnival ride. Sweat drenches her clothes, even soaking through her cape. She’s sure she reeks.

Every eye falls on her.

A storm follows - she’s immediately apprehended by one of the local capes, some guy in a green leotard who looks like he couldn’t stop her if she tried to leave. She wouldn’t even have to use her power. But he slaps some PK cuffs on her, and there goes her power, and a good chunk of what she’s feeling, as well. He wrinkles his nose at her, turns her around. “You’re not drunk, right?”

“I am not,” Bedevil manages, as politely as she can. News spreads quick, and she’s sure every hero in Houston knows by now that Oracle had ordered her arrested.

Several other capes and Shrine guards join the entourage guiding her past the fountain, down the lobby, and under the weighty stares of the hero statues. Their carved eyes all seem downcast. The Affect whispers of everyone’s apprehension, their disappointment in her.

She keeps her head high.

They bring her to the holding cells in the basement floors of the Shrine. Each one is a cavern of a room tiled by metal plates and walled by dull steel, with iron-clad doors that can’t be opened by one person alone or without an authorized Affect print. Each one has similar tech to the dampener cuffs, preventing power usage inside. She’s never been the person on the inside, and she’s amused to find that it doesn’t bother her that much. Why should she care, when she’s sped through the “World’s Worst Person” checklist in less than a month?

She frowns. No, she’s been preparing for that for a long time, she thinks.

It doesn’t matter, this is something she has to do. She needs to confront Oracle.

Highheart waits for her at the cell they’ve picked out for her. She has her hands folded behind her back as she watches Bedevil approach. She sighs, casts her glowing eyes downward. Once they’re within a few paces, she says, “You may go,” to the capes. The man who personally apprehended Bedevil starts at this, looks like he wants to resist, but nods and leaves.

“Good grief, what a mess. I hope wherever you went, it was worth it,” Highheart says. “At least tell me the drinking was good.”

“I didn’t go to drink.” That was incidental. “I went to find answers.”

“Did you?” Highheart asks, her eyebrow arched.

Bedevil shrugs, knowing that Highheart can read her emotions. She’d of course see Bedevil’s myriad of feelings about Gabe, Megajoule, and her mother all swirling around, but nothing about what those feelings meant. She could guess.

“What did you learn?”

“You’ll have to ask Oracle,” Bedevil says. She gestures with her bound hands to the door. “Can I go in, or do you want me to stand here all day?”

“I know you’ve always outranked me, and could speak to me as you please, but now you’re a prisoner.” Highheart frowns at her. “I’d suggest courtesy, now.”

“Can I go in… please?” Bedevil asks.

Highheart’s frown pinches tighter. Then, she shakes her head. “No. I’m not doing this with you. No matter who you are. Oracle will want to question you herself now.”

Highheart looks up, and while her face remains composed, serene, Bedevil catches a bit of religious fear from her Affect, along with a snatch of pity. The woman takes Bedevil’s dampener off as she enters the cell. “I would try to sleep, if I were you. Make use of the shower.” And then she leaves.

Since she can’t use her transmutation, Bedevil does make use of the shower, which is tucked away in a corner of the cell with a curtain that pulls around the stall. While the water is only lukewarm, it feels nice to let it run through her hair, over her shoulders, and down her body. There’s a crappy, heavy-chemical soap that feels like it’ll take her skin off, but it does the trick and at this point feels almost luxurious.

She reaches out to turn the shower off and discovers her hand shaking. She grabs it with her other, trying to steady it, but the tremors keep coming. Thanks to the PK field in the cell all she feels is a mild panic, but if she weren’t dampened, she’d be terrified. The symptoms of withdrawal are beginning.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Looks like I’m finally getting sober,” she says, flexing her hand as the tremors pass.

She dries off, feeling sick, feeling like the absolute worst, and sighs when she sees all she has to wear is the same cape outfit she walked in wearing - soaked in her alcoholic sweat. She slips into it, disgusted at how the slick fabric sticks to her freshly washed skin.

When she finally pulls the curtain back, Flashfire is at the window of her cell, looking in with a scowl on his face. He’s in jeans and a baggy, wrinkly t-shirt. Bruises cover his face, and his arm is in a sling.

“Flashfire!” she rushes over to the window. “You’re okay! How did you get back?”

Flashfire doesn’t say a word. He only stares at her with hatred so apparent she doesn’t need the Affect to read him. He reaches down and pushes the button that allows them to talk and says, “Fuck you.” Then he walks off.

Bedevil presses her head against the window. At least the field is overriding her sense of outrage.

It’s unfortunate he left - talking to someone would have at least distracted her from the oncoming trainwreck of her body quitting cold turkey. All she can do now is endure the physical symptoms of the withdrawal, alone.

There are no distractions. Not even her mom showing up to talk to her. Maybe Oracle is waiting her out on purpose. That’s the smart move.

She lies down on the flimsy bed, thinks, “I am the lowliest scum,” and then drifts into a light, fitful sleep.

#

When she wakes up, it’s not at anyone’s prodding, but her own stomach groaning. The world spins, worse than any time she’s ever been drunk. Her whole gut rushes up out of her mouth and she barely makes it to the toilet before she spews bile. It burns, all the way up and out of her, but the toilet is at least cold when she presses her cheek against it.

“What a horrible state.”

Oracle.

Bedevil snaps her head up, which is almost a mistake that causes her to vomit again, but she manages to keep it down.

Her mother floats in the middle of the cell, watching her with those too wide eyes with no small amount of disdain and pity. She’s shrouded by the blue sapphire light of Dotty’s gaze, coming from the hallway.

“Y-you lied to me,” Bedevil says, lifting herself away from the toilet. “You told me there were no clones.”

“It wasn’t for you to know. Now that you do… well, there’s no undoing that.” Oracle gestures for Bedevil to lie down on the bed.

Instead, she crosses her arms and refuses to budge from where she sits next to the toilet, half because she can’t stand to just go along with what her mother says, and half because she might puke again. “So you knew?”

“Of course I knew.”

Fury rises over the power of the PK field. She almost feels like she could get in touch with her power again, tear this place apart molecule by molecule.

Oracle narrows her too-wide eyes. “Careful with those thoughts, daughter.”

“You made clones of him and tortured them in a lab. For what?” Bedevil shouts. It’s not just the scientists, whoever ran the lab, that Paul or Terry that Gabe mentioned. Her own mother knew it was happening. “After everything I’ve done for you, you owe me an answer. Why did you do this?”

“I owe you nothing,” her mother says.

“You do. I’ve been nothing but faithful. I did everything you asked, and you still crucified me when Home Run turned out to be stronger than we thought. You told me to work with him and then had the capes arrest me for doing what you wanted. You owe me an answer as to why.”

Oracle watches her for a few seconds, silent and oppressive, before speaking:

“The cloning program was meant to test theories of the Affect. It was also meant to give us a perfected weapon. A perfect cape who couldn’t be killed even when you killed his body. His spirit would simply move to the next available clone. An Affect Entity under our control. We knew it was possible, and Megajoule wanted us to do it.”

Bedevil couldn’t believe that, not even a little. “There’s no way. He wouldn’t… he wouldn’t doom innocent kids to die.”

“His clones, not innocent kids. They weren’t their own people. In fact, they didn’t even have their own minds for most of the research.”

Gabe’s pained face pops into her mind. What she did to him, what he said. He is his own person.“He is!” she shouts. “They all were!”

“No. They were always extensions of his will. They were him, perfectly.”

“Even if that were true, he isn’t anymore!” Bedevil flings her hands up, desperate for her mother to understand, to see what she means. “If you could see his mind, his Affect, you’d know he’s unique.”

“His Affect perfectly matched Megajoule’s before the original Lilac facility was destroyed-”

“But now, now that he’s lived in Houston, now that he’s formed his own life, his Affect is different from Megajoule’s. You’ve seen the scans, you have to have seen my reports.”

“I see what you should have seen,” her mother reprimands. “That Gabe, the soul that is growing up around Megajoule’s Affect, is a mere weed. What’s more, once he’s recovered, that weed will be uprooted and he will become the vessel he was meant to be. We’ve recovered the wayward program director. We can pick up where we left off.”

Bedevil’s heart is a ticking bomb in her chest, speeding up the more she bashes against the wall of her mother’s will. “He’s his own person,” she says, weakly, knowing that her mother can’t be reasoned with on this. This isn’t a simple matter of proving a fact, showing that X equals X and Y equals Y. Her mother knows the facts and disagrees.

“He would not exist if not for us,” she says.

Bedevil scoffs. “Yeah well, I wouldn’t exist without you getting pregnant, but here I am. Does that mean you or my dad own me?”

“Oh, really, Ruby, are you so dense as to not understand the difference? You were not shaped or sculpted, you were not crafted in a lab. The clone was. He was built, he was made, he is artificial. He is not a real person like you.”

“When did you become so inhuman?” Bedevil asks.

“You really have gotten yourself twisted all around.” She indulges in a very mundane expression, rubbing her illusory temples with her illusory fingers. “I’m not inhuman, I’m doing what is necessary to protect our world. What’s inhuman is allowing all we’ve built to be destroyed by threats we can control.”

And really, what is there to say to that? Bedevil frowns.

“Our victory is ultimate,” Oracle says. “Protection everlasting. You know this, dear one. You know that we will save the world.”

“Is that what PK is doing? What we’ve been doing, with the dampeners that… they have people in them, mom! People, with real lives and hearts.! Is that saving the world?”

Her mother stops on that. She nods and says, “What PK is doing… I don’t know how they hid it. I’ll look into it myself. If it turns out it’s something we can use, though, if it protects millions of people, then we must use it.”

Bedevil, despite the field, feels terror. “We can’t shovel bodies into a fire to keep other people warm.”

“We’re going around again.” Oracle sighs and shakes her head. “I’ve got to handle Doppelganger now, while Highheart cleans up your mess. Meltdown and Phoenix will arrive in Houston and return you to us. You’ll be disentangled from all this nonsense.”

“Why? Why go to all this effort just to keep me around, keep me agreeing with you? There’s no way to know whether or not it’ll even stick, with something this big! You could-” You could just melt my mind trying.

Oh.

Oracle’s smile is tight lipped as she looks her daughter over. “I paid far too high a price for you to try and walk the world back into chaos.” She disappears, leaving Bedevil alone to despair and fight withdrawal in her cell.