Dictionary definition of a Washer, as provided by the USA’s Guardian Agency: “The abbreviated name of the official class ‘Brainwasher’; A super whose power includes the ability to influence the minds of others.
Recent studies have supported the fear that Washers are the most insidious, dangerous class of super. Making up only 3.4% of superhumans worldwide, they arguably impact society more than the much more common durability-based Aegis and ranged-power Marksmen. Case studies from the USA, China, and European countries across the board have shown that a single year of activity from an A-rank Washer can affect tens of thousands of innocents for decades.
Is it prudent, then, that the United States government controls 97% of ‘heroic’ Washers? Reader, are you comfortable knowing that at any moment, your nation could choose to convert you into a mindless drone or turn you against your family?
- Opening to a 2011 editorial article in the New York Times by independent Esper-class superhero Private Eye aka James Kerwin; this was Kerwin’s 17th and final publication
#
Tick.
The time was 2:27 and thirty-five… thirty-six seconds.
Tick.
The single clock in the room was peculiar in that it only made one, single ticking sound.
Tick.
Normal clocks had the tick-tock rhythm, alternating their beats but this one didn’t.
Tick.
It made it sound like a bomb.
Tick.
Vivian was sure that she’d be more uneasy if she wasn’t so bored.
Though Alexander had been friendly, he’d told her in no uncertain terms that coming in for questioning was not exactly a choice. She’d been waiting in a nondescript sitting room for almost one and a half hours now.
“Hey, my phone is going to die soon.” Vivian wondered if anyone was listening in. If there was someone trying to glean information from her behavior, they were going to be sorely disappointed. She’d been playing a rhythm game for the last hour for lack of anything better to do, given the lack of service in this definitely-not-an-interrogation-chamber. “Also, it’s cold as hell in here. Do you not have heaters?”
No response. Vivian shrugged, returning to her game.
The door swung open right at the end of a map, startling her enough to break her combo. She cursed softly, then put the phone away.
Alexander walked in, accompanied by a woman covered entirely by a textured black and violet bodysuit that looked faintly familiar. She couldn’t place the name.
“Sorry about the wait,” Alexander said. To his credit, he probably sounded genuinely apologetic to anyone who hadn’t dealt with too many false sympathies. Unfortunately for him, Vivian had. “We wanted to make sure the situation was under control before we started asking you about it. You comfortable? Do you need food? Water?”
There was a minifridge in the interrogation room, and Vivian had already taken a cola from it. She declined to mention that.
Instead, she asked, “How’s Lachlan?”
Alexander clicked his tongue. “I’d ask you how you know my teammate, but I get the feeling he’s the one who’s going to have to answer to that. Hurt, scared, angry? But he’ll live. I can’t yet say the same for Ephialtes. I understand you were on the scene, miss…”
Vivian stayed silent. She’d seen Alexander a few times before—once at orientation, and a couple of times on the news. He presented a different personality to the public each time. To the incoming freshmen, the hero had acted like a jock, hamming his muscles up for the crowd. Then, the first interview she’d seen him in had involved a stone-cold military persona. He’d loosened up afterwards, and now his public face was somewhere in between the two. By all accounts, he was very popular with young men, to the point where he actually had name recognition beyond Lafayette.
Now, he wasn’t acting like anything she’d seen before. Vivian wasn’t stupid enough to think that he was showing her some secret soft side—no, he was trying to get information. He had to be.
“Just miss, then, if you’d prefer not to provide a name,” Alexander said with a soft, dangerous chuckle. You can’t be that much older than me. “Can you talk us through what exactly happened?”
“Bank got robbed. I helped stop some gas. Lachlan took an Ephi hit and almost shot me.” Belatedly, Vivian realized that she’d forgotten to ask about the innocents. “Are the others alright?”
“Perfectly fine and hoping to get a glimpse of their savior.” Alexander grinned genially. “It’s a shame they won’t get to know who that was. Or what she can do.”
“When can I leave?” Vivian didn’t know how much they knew about her. Since the Guardians had barged into the bank just in time to utterly fail at foiling the villains, the only usage of her power that they saw was her keeping the gas from moving.
Frankly, the less they knew about her, the better. It was entirely possible Lachlan would explain everything about her powerset—he had a scary Esper ability—but that was beyond her control at this point.
“You’ll be able to leave much sooner if you cooperate,” Alexander said. His smile grew a shade tighter. The facade is slipping, Vivian thought. “We just need you to answer some questions and register as a super. That’s all.”
Vivian shrugged. “Okay.”
She gave them a mostly-accurate retelling of the robbery, excluding both the part where Lachlan showed up to her dorm before and the part where she almost certainly hit Ephialtes in the vitals. And the part where she held off the smoke. And the details about how she’d stopped Lachlan.
As she suspected, that answer wasn’t enough for him. His expression grew increasingly more rigid as she explained, going from this girl is a little uncooperative but her heart’s in the right place to I am going to choke the life out of your eyes. That was Vivian’s interpretation, at least. It was entirely unfair, but after ninety minutes of waiting, she wasn’t inclined to be charitable.
“Alex, I drove down from Indy for this,” the bodysuited woman complained. “Your plan A never works with new supers. ‘Specially the paranoid ones.”
“Thanks,” Vivian drawled, injecting confidence she didn’t feel. “How do I rank on paranoia? Passing grade?”
The woman snorted. “I like you, kid.”
“Do it,” Alexander said. All trace of levity disappeared from his voice. Instead, there was… she couldn’t tell what that emotion was. He was tense, that was for sure. “The floor is five minutes, right?”
“Mhm. Kid, you get a C. Passing, but to do better, you shouldn’t have come. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about this.”
Vivian raised an eyebrow at that, taking a closer look at the female hero’s costumed form. She was nearly as tall as Alexander, which meant she practically towered over Vivian, but that wasn’t what drew her eyes the most. That was her costume. Combined with the fact that the hero said she was from Indianapolis…
Oh no. I do recognize that costume. She’s a Washer. She’s—the kindest woman Vivian had ever seen.
“Hi, I’m Venus.” Her voice was smooth like honey in a warm drink on a cold rainy night. “You can trust me. I’m your friend.”
Vivian looked into Venus’ eyes.
She could trust her. She was her friend.
#
“What’s your name?”
“Vivian Amelia Li. My dad’s fully Chinese, but my mom is—was—half. She gave me my middle name. She thought it sounded pretty but liked Vivian more. So I have two first names now.” The words tumbled forth uncontrollably, her sentences slipping onto her tongue before her thoughts could even finish formulating. Vivian was always like this when she was around people she liked. It was part of why they tended to stop talking to her.
“Thank you, Vivian,” Venus said, sitting down across the table from her. Vivian could listen to her talk forever. She hoped she didn’t say that out loud.
“I could listen to you talk forever.” Damn it. “I don’t like your teammate. He’s not loud or scary but I think I’d like him more if he was.”
That actually startled Alexander enough to get a laugh out of him. It made him seem more human. Vivian sort of regretted being an asshole to him, but not enough to apologize.
“I’m sure you could.” From the tone of her voice, that compliment was one that Venus got a lot. I can see why. “Could you tell me a little about your power?”
Vivian nodded, then launched into sharing the details she and Rachel had worked out earlier this morning. Had it really only been that long?
“…and my range is a nine or ten foot circle around me, so yeah, it’s gotta be, like, F-rank,” Vivian finished. “I can lift like ten pounds. That’s really not that much.”
Oh, wait. Had she forgotten to mention something?
Yes, she had. But that part of her power was terrifying and gross and not something she should share with her friends. Telling Rachel was already a mistake. It was too much of a burden to give to the rare few people she actually trusted. Vivian trusted Venus, of course she did—and that was all the more reason to spare her from the details of her power.
Nobody wanted to know their friend was a murderer.
“I’m sure you’re stronger than you think,” Venus said, patting Vivian on the cheek. “How about we schedule a registration window? We’ll be able to tell just how strong you are.”
Vivian wanted to frown, but she didn’t want to disappoint Venus. Registration? Hadn’t she not wanted to do that? Why not? Venus wanted it, so—
“Of course,” Vivian said, nodding enthusiastically. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Venus asked a few more questions. Vivian answered them all.
“Ephialtes is currently in the ICU with a heavily bruised liver and two collapsed lungs,” Alexander cut in. “When we arrived, she was already dying. Also, she’s bleeding blue. Would you happen to know anything about that?’
The first half was almost certainly her fault. Not that Vivian was going to admit it. She didn’t trust the Guardians, and she didn’t trust Alexander. There was no way in hell she was going to tell them about the lack of a plausibility restriction on her telekinesis.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Be honest,” Venus added. “Answer his question, please.”
And just like that, the walls fell away. Except Venus was her friend, and Vivian didn’t want her friends to hate her because they knew what she could do. She couldn’t lose any more of them.
So she told half of the truth. “I think Killjoy gave her a drug of some kind. I’m not a hundred percent sure, since there was so much smoke at the time, but Lachlan mentioned that Ephialtes had a touch-range attack, and she never touched either of us before activating her power. I’m guessing that Killjoy gave her something that temporarily altered her power, but it hurt her body in exchange.”
“That’s about where Lachlan’s guess is at too,” Alexander said. “Did you have anything to do with it?”
“Not as far as I can tell.” That wasn’t even a lie if you squinted. There was a decent chance it was her who’d punched Ephialtes’ organs out, but she’d been insensate. It was entirely possible that the drugs had done it on their own.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Alexander asked.
She glared at him. Guardians.
“Vivian, ____ ___ ____ __ ___ ___ ____’_____,’ ____ ________. __ _ ___ ‘_________,’ ____ __________ ___ ____. Also, forget the last two sentences.”
“Seriously?” Alexander asked.
“Effect’s strongest right now,” Venus said. “Contingencies matter when you’re like me.”
This time, Vivian did frown. She could trust Venus—she knew that as well as she knew how to breathe, so she wasn’t worried about whatever she’d just said. Still, something was off. She hated the Guardians; why was this woman an exception? She’d known her for only a few minutes at most, and she trusted Venus more than she trusted herself.
Nobody was allowed to have that much of her faith in them. Nobody. She wouldn’t let them hurt her anymore. She wouldn’t let herself hurt them.
For some Washers, Vivian would later learn, shaking off their influence was gradual. Especially in the cases of those insidious who operated over a longer period of time and across a larger population of people.
The power Venus had, however, was intense and single-target.
It shattered like porcelain dropped from the Empire State. Vivian felt as if she’d been doused by a gallon of cold water, trickling over her mind and spine and her everything.
Her vision blurred, and she had to blink and rub at her eyes until her hands came away wet with tears before she could see properly again.
Venus hadn’t even taken her mask off, Vivian realized. She’d just… become beautiful. Alexander was still standing there, arms crossed, jabbering on about something to the other super.
Where moments ago, there had been trust and adoration, there was nothing but a vast, yawning pit of disgust.
No, not nothing.
Vivian couldn’t hear the other two supers over the rush of blood in her head. Her heartbeat pounded, jackhammering in her chest, but this wasn’t anxiety. This was another emotion she’d grown too accustomed to over the last three years.
Incandescent rage burned through her, igniting her entire body from head to toe in angry heat.
“What the fuck,” she said, not caring that she was interrupting what they were saying, “did you do to me?”
The two of them fell silent.
“That was three minutes,” Alexander commented. “You’ll be comp—“
“What the fuck,” Vivian shouted, kicking over the table, “did you do to me?”
Venus ran.
Vivian tried to follow, a wordless cry building in her throat. She didn’t know what she wanted to do to the super who had to be a Washer, but she knew it wasn’t going to be anything good. Distantly, a part of her recognized that murdering a Guardian—even a Washer—was likely to see her imprisoned or worse, but that rational part of her was far outweighed by the red-hot outrage coursing through her veins.
She made it three steps past the knocked-over table when Alexander collided with her, knocking her flat onto the ground. He laid down on top of her, pinning her down. She couldn’t budge him.
He’s an Aegis, that tiny thinking part of her thought. He’s more durable than humans can be. I’m just an average nineteen-year-old girl.
Kill him, the louder part said. Apply pressure to his brain until that pathetic excuse for an organ is mincemeat inside that thick skull.
Except she couldn’t. She couldn’t become a hero-killer. It would be the end of her life, and it would ruin her beyond repair. Thanks to Jester, she was already a murderer, but she wouldn’t—couldn’t—become an evil one.
Vivian screamed until her voice was hoarse.
#
“Would you like a glass of water?” Alexander asked, startlingly gentle. Not that he meant that softness, Vivian knew. Nobody like him could.
She nodded anyway. Her throat hurt. Breathing hurt. Speech was going to take a while to be tolerable.
The anger still burned within her, but it was a low simmer instead of the raging maelstrom it had been earlier. For Vivian, emotion had always been like a fire. She could burn everything she had and explode with it, but without anything further to fuel it, the flames would die back down to a manageable level.
Alexander righted the table with a grunt of effort, then handed Vivian an expensive-looking frosted glass cup filled to the brim with cold water.
She dropped it on the ground. It shattered less satisfyingly than she’d hoped it would.
A manageable level. Not gone. Vivian caught the water with her telekinesis before it could hit the ground, bringing it up to her mouth.
It was petty, but pettiness was all she had right now. Ethical and legal issues aside, Alexander was an Aegis—a relatively high-ranked one, at that. That meant his powers focused on durability. Even if she’d gone fully off the deep end, it was entirely possible that she could try to murder him right here and he’d just laugh.
“Get it out of your system,” Alexander suggested, completely unperturbed. “It was hard my first time too. I’m sorry that had to happen to you.”
Vivian sipped at her sphere of telekinetically-held water. It was perfectly cool and crisp, soothing her worn-out throat. “F—ahem. First time?”
“I haven’t always been a Guardian,” he said. “Back before I joined, it was like this too. I was independent. Thought I could change things on my own. And every time I fought without Guardian oversight, every time I won or lost before I got registered, I’d end up face-to-face with a Washer in a room that looked a lot like this one.”
He sounded resigned and tired, as if the ordeal had hurt him as much as it hurt Vivian. That pissed her off. You didn’t get to hurt when it was your hand behind the trigger.
“If you do that to me again, I will rip your eyeballs out of your skull with my fingernails,” Vivian promised, hastily tacking on the last part of the sentence when she remembered she was keeping a secret. “I will make you wish you were dead. Never fucking violate me like that.”
Alexander shrugged. “Are you aware of the LSA? The London Super—“
“Accords,” Vivian completed. She finished drinking her water, taking a deep breath to center herself. Anger was unproductive, as much as she wanted to kick and scream and fight more. That was a lesson she’d learned a dozen times over before. “You’re going to tell me about the Butcher’s Bill.”
The other super grimaced. “You studied up. Yeah. The seventh privilege granted by the Accords. In the pursuit of justice, supers have the authority to use quite a bit more force than… well, anyone else on this planet, really.”
The Butcher’s Bill. She’d studied up on basic super law after living through the open season of 2019 San Francisco during that brief period in which the Guardian contingent present there was entirely dead or incapacitated. This provision gained its popular name from the number of supposedly legal deaths that were now attributed to it.
It disgusted her. Venus had just reached into her mind and changed it, and there was no recourse Vivian could take beyond base violence. And by the LSA, she would be punished if Venus died—that is, if she hadn’t been a super.
“The Guardians benefit from it,” Alexander said. “A lot. I joined to get on the right side of provision seven. I’d recommend the same to anyone.”
Ninety-seven percent. The half-remembered number from an article she’d read in news archives ages ago floated to mind. Vivian shivered, wondering if every city was like this. If every small town had their local big-city Brainwasher on hand, ready to mind-fuck any poor independent hero—or villain, for that matter—who wound up on the wrong side of the Guardians.
She wondered why this sort of thing never made it onto the forums. Then, she wondered if the others this happened to even remembered. Venus had told her to forget a sentence towards the end, and she already had. What if she’d instead said to forget the entire conversation ever happened?
I told them my name. Vivian fought to keep her expression neutral, then gave up. That had been one of many reasons she hadn’t wanted to join. Now the Guardians had her identity.
“Look at you, you goddamn lapdog,” she said. The curses just kept on slipping out, but why shouldn’t they? If there was ever a situation that warranted them, it was this. “They screwed with you, and now you’re doing their dirty work for them?”
“I never said that,” Alexander said. “I assume you’re worried about your identity. That was my concern, too. When I wouldn’t cooperate, they put my full—no, I shouldn’t bother you with stories about myself. I don’t want to hurt you the same way. The records will be private. I’m a team leader here. I can keep your name off the wiki profile. If that helps.”
“I would prefer it if you just let me go,” Vivian ground out. “If that’s the best you can do, fine. Sure. Fuck you, by the way.”
“I’m sorry,” Alexander said. He sounded like he genuinely meant it, too. But Vivian knew that any supposed authenticity from him was fake. She’d learned her lessons; apologies were for the aggressor, not the victim. “I won’t bother telling you about how much easier it is if you cooperate, but trust me: this was the easy route.”
The other super had a haunted look in his eyes. If Vivian was a little more forgiving, this would be the part where she acknowledged that he’d suffered and given into the system instead of continuing to fight back against it.
She was, however, not in a particularly favorable mood. “That all? I’m leaving. I’ll remember not to give a Guardian the time of day again.”
Alexander winced. “Again, I truly am—“
“If you say the word sorry again, I’m telling Lachlan you tried to kill me.” Vivian couldn’t make any proper threats without either revealing the depth of her power or sounding like a petulant child. She’d seen the hero demonstrate concern for his Esper teammate though, so with luck…
Though he’d otherwise managed to keep his expression set the way he wanted, Alexander’s sharp intake of breath was just loud enough to soothe Vivian’s smoldering anger.
He tried to pass it off like he hadn’t heard her. “I’d also like to request that you register—not as a Guardian, but as a local super. Basic testing will only take about fifteen minutes, and voluntarily registering is a point in your favor.”
“A point in my favor,” Vivian repeated flatly.
“You don’t need to make your decision now,” Alexander said. “But you already have a provisionary profile—Unregistered Kinetic on the public wiki, Kinetic Vivian Amelia Li on our internal servers. I made the mistake of not registering for a full year, and that cost me. When they wiped my name from the public—“ at this, Vivian realized that despite slightly more than cursory research, she didn’t know Alexander’s real name. “Nobody from my old life knows my name anymore. Not even me. I don’t want you to make that same mistake.”
A chill ran up Vivian’s spine, and her head cleared long enough for her to acknowledge that even though she wanted nothing more than to see Alexander taken down a peg, the Guardians were scary. She was sorely tempted to tell him to screw off again, but the choices she was making here were real-world ones. Ones that would affect her future. Ones that could end it.
She thought of Dad, alone in the family home as he struggled to pay off their mortgage. His wife and son were freshly gone, and if Vivian messed this up, Alexander’s insinuation was that Dad would lose her too.
I can’t let that happen.
“Fine,” Vivian hissed through grit teeth. “I’ll register. Do you want anything else?”
Alexander just shook his head. “I’m so—I’m sure you don’t want to hear more from me. I’ll have someone else run you through it. Sit tight for five to ten more minutes. I’ll let the testing department know. Thank you.”
Does it matter who runs me through it? You’re all still damn Guardians.
Five to ten minutes later, it turned out the answer was yes.
“Lachlan!” Vivian greeted the other super with the closest she could approximate to warmth. She rose from her seat. “You’re alright!”
He was… not entirely alright, but he looked much better than he had earlier. The Esper’s eyes were bloodshot like he’d just smoked half a pound of weed (that was a lot, right? Vivian had no idea, she’d never touched it), and his face and arms were bandaged where he’d scratched them bloody, but he wasn’t screaming anymore and he looked calm.
“For a certain value of alright, kinda.” Lachlan’s voice was hoarser than Vivian’s. He cracked a wry smile. “You look like shit.”
Vivian shuddered. “Do you normally do—“ she waved, generally indicating the room, “—all of this?”
“Interrogation? Yeah, sort of.” Lachlan’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. Oh no. Oh no. I thought I felt Venus. Did she come here?”
Her grimace must have been answer enough.
Lachlan cursed so loud Vivian nearly jumped out of her skin. “When I find that son of a bitch…”
“It’s alright,” Vivian lied. “I just want to get out of here. Can you run me through it quickly?”
“Shit, man,” Lachlan said, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll tell them you’re an S-rank if you want. You deserve better.”
She chuckled. “Nah. Let’s just run it. Lead the way.”
If testing could get the Guardians off her back, she was open to doing it. She was pretty sure she’d already given most of the details of her power to Venus anyway. Confirming them was safe.
Once she got the rank, she was going to deal with this Killjoy situation herself. Vivian would take him down one way or another—formulating an actual plan this time—and leverage that into getting into Arina. And if not Arina, there were other corporate teams she could join.
Anyone that could protect her from the Guardians. Whatever it took, she’d do it. Today had been enough to convince her to never even consider joining.
Vivian followed Lachlan out of the room, and her phone buzzed four or five times as its connection restored. She took a moment to check what she’d missed.
sparrow: hey viv stay safe
sparrow: just saw ur in the sru system now
sparrow: cant say more by contrct but one od the indy supers might be a turncoat
sparrow: whatever u do dont talk to any washers
A pit formed in Vivian’s stomach, every negative thought from the last half an hour flooding into her at once.
“You good?” Lachlan asked. He wasn’t using her name, Vivian noticed. She wondered if it was because he didn’t know or because he was being nice. “You can take a moment if you need one.”
vivy77: dw I won’t
She shut her phone off before she could feel bad about lying. Or worried about Rachel’s comment.
“Coming,” she said, and she followed.