A soft rattle as the doorknob turned was all the warning I got to quiet my sobs.

“Go away,” I muttered into my pillow. Fireball had better leave if he didn’t want to feel my fist. I didn’t have the energy to keep up a façade and banter with him right now.

“Ms. Dancer, what a surprise.”

I dropped the pillow, my tears drying up instantly at the all-too familiar voice. Mr. Falcus stood in the doorway, smiling like a shark that had just spotted its prey. His suit was ironed, his shoes shined, his hair gelled into complete submission. I shrank back against my pillows, realizing for the first time what a sight I must look with my red eyes, tangled hair, and hospital gown. Just last night I had been commanding the attention of a roomful of Rubes, and now all I got was a slightly disgusted look down the end of his snub nose.

In an attempt to regain control of the situation I cleared my throat and brushed the hair from my eyes. “I thought you were Fireball,” I said loftily. It wasn’t exactly a supervillain monologue, but at least my voice sounded steady.

“Don’t worry about your new buddy, he’s still busy talking to my assistant while I use the washroom. Little did I expect to find the villainous Death’s Dancer crying remorseful tears in one of the great Fireball’s guest rooms. Does this mean you’re ready to repent of your wrongdoing?” Mr. Falcus turned his back on me to shut the door with a quiet click.

I clenched my pillow in my left fist, but made no response.

He crossed the room until he was standing right beside my bed, looking down at me. I did my best to ignore him, fixing my gaze instead on the cast that wrapped my right arm from hand to bicep.

“Come now, no last words?” He asked, placing a finger under my chin and forcing my head up at an unnatural angle to meet his eyes. I wanted to knock his hand away, to do something, anything to get him out of this room, but I found myself frozen, staring death in the face and not for the first time, although it would probably be the last. “I thought we’d taught you better than that.”

“Go away.” I managed to force the two words out of my closed up throat, but that was all I could do.

“Oh, I will, just as soon as you’re dead.” The words were so matter of fact it was difficult to take them seriously. The slim black stick he pulled from his pocket was harder to disregard though. It looked almost like a fat pencil, but the way he held it made it clear it was far more important than that.

“This little device will stop your heart in just a few seconds,” Mr. Falcus said, still in his conversational tone. “You’ve already done far too much damage to that precious body of yours. Very inconsiderate of you, since we need to examine it for scientific research to improve our ingenious little microchips.”

He pressed the slim black cylinder against my chest. I made a weak attempt to back up, but he quickly put a stop to that by grabbing my cast and twisting it up behind me in an arm lock. The pain was excruciating, and it was all I could do not to pass out. Black spots danced across my vision, turning Mr. Falcus’ face into a pixelated blur. I couldn’t hold back a little cry at the unexpected pain.

But to be honest it was almost a relief, to have Mr. Falcus take away all the choices. I had been prepared to die on that rooftop when Fireball attacked me. It was a simple fluke that I had survived at all. Who knew, maybe there would be an afterlife of some kind where I could meet up with Sera and apologize for everything. Maybe Peg would be there too, although I doubted I could face Peg.

My focus narrowed to Mr. Falcus’ face and the little point of pressure right at the top of my ribcage. He had worn just the same expression when telling me about Sera’s death. I clung to that image, a small spark lighting in my ribcage. Was I really prepared to die and let Sera’s killer go free? Not only go free, but free to roam the world, implanting his stupid microchips at will.

No, that wasn’t what Sera would have wanted. The idea crystallized in my mind with an intensity that left me breathless. I was the only one Sera had told about the Rubes, and she had probably known more than anyone else about what they were planning. If I died then her dream of exposing their little plots died as well. The world would be overrun with heroes and vilains, all of them under the direct control of the Rubes, who could turn their powers on and off at will. You couldn’t get a much more powerful motivator towards loyalty than that, and having just lost my powers I knew just how far people would go to get such things back.

I had to live. For Sera.

My left hand curled around the only thing in reach, the pillow that was still sitting on my lap.

“Goodbye, Death’s Dancer,” Mr. Falcus said, and squeezed the end button on his little black stick.

Pain instantly erupted in my chest, like being hit by a second fireball, but my left arm was already moving, the pillow flying through the air and directly into Mr. Falcus’ head. He rocked backwards, surprised more than anything else, but it was enough to break the connection of his device with my chest. I threw myself off the bed, hitting his legs with the full weight of my body and sending both of us tumbling to the floor.

His black device of death rolled out of his hand to the far corner of the room. Mr. Falcus tried to get up and reach it, but I put all of my weight into lying on his body, since that was about all I could do. I was still shaking from the brief seconds of contact with his electric heart stopper, and it had made all of my other injuries feel freshly afire.

He punched me wildly, but luckily Mr. Falcus had never been trained in martial arts and I was able to easily deflect his blows, even in my prone position with one arm in a cast.

Just then the door to the room burst open, and Fireball appeared, running at top speed into the little room. He immediately tripped over Mr. Falcus and landed on top of me, driving me into Mr. Falcus and sending red hot fire radiating outward from the burns on my chest.

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To give him credit, he was quick to recover, and even did his best to roll off me without putting any more pressure on my body. In a jiffy, he had grabbed me bodily and hauled me to my feet and was dragging me towards the door.

“Wait!” I pulled free and hobbled over to the far corner, scooping up Mr. Falcus’ little black cylinder. He tried to grab one of my legs as I passed, but Fireball had already grabbed my arm and pulled me from his grip outside the room. He shut and locked the door behind us then leaned against it, breathing heavily.

“I have a powerful Rube agent locked up in my lair. They’re going to fire me for sure. I think it’s time you told me what’s going on.”

I sank down into the nearest chair, not caring that Fireball gave me a pointed look indicating I should stand and face his interrogation. It was time to trust him. After all, Sera had trusted him, maybe not with her secrets, but at least enough to work with him every night as his sidekick.

“Alright, here’s what I know.”

I stopped talking when I got to the rooftop where Fireball had showed up. Partly because he knew what happened from there, but mostly because my throat had closed up again. I sat staring at my clenched left hand, fingernails digging into my palm. It wasn’t just Sera I had lost, it was Bea as well. She had been furious enough after my attempt to kill Peg. I didn’t want to think about her not-actually-sister Sera.

The realization struck with more force than a fireball to the chest.

“Wait.” I grabbed Fireball’s arm. He flinched away, but I held on with all of my returning strength.

“Bea still thinks Sera’s her sister.”

“So what?” Fireball had stopped trying to free himself and just stood there looking at me with total incomprehension. But maybe that was just the mask causing that.

“She must still be alive.”

Fireball sighed. “Look, I miss Coal as much as you miss Sera, but she’s dead. No amount of wishful thinking is going to bring her back.”

“So where’s her body then?” I pressed.

Fireball looked away, and hope stabbed through my heart. “You mean you didn’t see her body?”

“Of course I saw her body! I saw it when you were standing over it with a knife. But after I...after I hit you, I couldn’t carry both of you so I decided to take you to hospital and come back for her body later. After all, she was already dead. But when I got back, her body was gone. I assumed her sister Bea had taken her away to make funeral arrangements.” He still wouldn’t look at me.

“She’s not Bea’s sister,” I repeated, frustrated. “What part of ‘mind-controlling ex-supervillain didn’t you understand?”

I wrapped the sheets tightly around my fist then unravelled them again, tryin to do anything to release the frustration that Fireball’s delay was making build inside of me. We were wasting time. All the time we spent here was more time the Rubes might do who knew what to Sera, or transport her far away where we would never find her. But Fireball was right about at least one thing: I couldn’t do this on my own. Not with only one working arm, no powers, and a background level of pain that threatened to make me blackout at any time. And the only person I could see to help me was the very person I had sworn was my nemesis.

“Look, I don’t pretend to know how mind control works, but I know what I saw. You’re just grasping at straws to try and make it hurt less. But it’s ok. It’ll be ok.”

I shook my head, squeezing his arm tighter at his condescending tone. “No. The rubes wouldn’t have killed her. Not just to take down a lowly supervillain like me. They have dozens of other supervillains around the globe. But a real mind controller is far too valuable to them. They’ve been using her for years, until she escaped, anyway, and they would want her back at any cost.”

Fireball pried my fingers from his arm, and I was too weak to stop him.

“And how exactly do you propose finding her and rescuing her from them, assuming she is still alive?” He asked, still all skepticism.

A grin spread across my face, the first one I had felt like producing in days. It stretched my muscles in a pleasant way and I felt almost back to my old self again. “It’s time for Death’s Dancer to return.”

“No, absolutely not.” Fireball didn’t seem to notice the importance of this moment to me. “I’m not about to let you go terrorize the city again.”

“I’m not asking for your permission.” I clenched the thin sheet in my hands, wishing it was his collar instead.

“In case you haven’t noticed, you’re locked in a room in my headquarters. You need my permission to go to the bathroom, much less start another reign of terror on the city. And have you forgotten you don’t have any superpowers anymore?”

“Details.” I waved this all aside. “Here’s the thing: they think I’m dead, or at least grievously injured. They aren’t going to be expecting me to show up and start committing crimes, it might scare them enough to throw them off their game.”

“Or they might just kill you themselves and reprimand me to boot.” Fireball pointed out, crossing his muscular arms over his chest.

“So that’s it then – you’re more worried about your career than you are about saving Sera from a lifetime of imprisonment?” I smirked at Fireball’s look of consternation.

“I’m just trying to be practical,” he started saying, but I cut him off.

“Practical? Ha! We’re supervillains! Or,” I remembered who I was talking to just a little bit too late. “Superpowered people anyway. What does practical have to do with any of this?”

“Look, before you go racing off into trouble without any knowledge of what you are going to find, will you at least let me do some research to see if there is in fact anyone left to actually rescue?” Fireball asked, in what I recognized as his attempting to be totally reasonable voice.

I rolled my eyes. He always took that tone with me, as though I was a skittish animal, or a mad supervillain and unlikely to listen to reason. “By the time you get any ‘research’ of yours done, Sera will be long gone and we’ll never find out the truth. It’s now or never.”

Fireball pushed himself away from the door and paced up and down the length of the room, hair growing ever higher as he ran his hands through it.

“Don’t you want to save Coal?” I taunted. I tried to keep my voice light, to prove that this wasn’t that important to me, but the adrenaline rushing through my body told a different story. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed Fireball on board. I couldn’t rescue Sera on my own.

“Of course I want to save him! Her. Gah!” It was strange seeing Fireball so flustered. So...human. He wasn’t anything like that stuffed-up, self-righteous prick I had met after my first bank robbery. I could tell he actually cared about Sera. Everyone seemed to.

“We both want to save her. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t like you and I don’t want to work with you, but it’s the only way that we can get to her in time,” I said, swallowing my pride. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get her away from the Rubes. So I guess the question is, can you bring yourself to work with a supervillain?”

Fireball stopped pacing in front of the door that contained Mr. Falcus. He stared at it for a while, back towards me, not saying anything. At last he whirled, cloak swirling dramatically out around him.

“Ok, just this once. We’ll work together for Coal’s – I mean for Sera’s sake.”

He held out his hand to me. I froze, not sure what he was planning to do with that hand. It was only when he started pulling it back that I realized what his intention had been. I got to my feet and reached out my own hand, clasping his palm in mine. Again I was struck by how warm and human it was. We shook hands briefly before pulling our hands back, as though burnt.

“For Sera,” I repeated.