Unsurprisingly, there weren't many places in the Skip I’d recommend if you wanted to hit the town for a night.
Surprisingly, there was exactly one.
I touched down in front of a building that would have looked more at home on the Vegas Strip than amidst the gargantuan ruins of obsolete industry. It had neon lights, a waterfixture, even spotlights sending dancing beams into the sky. Muted, bombastic big band music echoed into the squalor around it. Crowds of people milled in the square in front of the building, some dressed to the nines, others very much not, and more than a few others in costumes that were varying degrees of sinister.
A brass sign across the front of the building proclaimed it—in elaborate, art deco font—Club Hellfire.
People shied away from me as I made my way towards the entrance. My colors—red, black, and silver, not my first choices and not as good as my old designs—proclaimed me someone with whom messing ought not occur to civilians, and my reputation did the same for others in costumes.
At least, I pretended it was my reputation, and not my associations.
There was no line to get in—you could exit and enter freely—but there was a bouncer. At first glance, you’d have been forgiven from mistaking him for a run-of-the-mill thug-style meta. He was huge, grotesquely muscular, and wearing a cage of thick-slatted iron on his head, hiding his face. Those were the kinds of aesthetic details you’d expect if you saw a metahuman enforcer in a lawless part of town.
After that, you’d probably notice his silver tuxedo and think he was sending pretty mixed messages. If you were particularly cultured, you might be able to recognize he wore a hand-tailored Brioni, threaded in silk and white-gold, which retailed at somewhere near fifty-thousand dollars, and think that maybe management believed nobody would hit a bouncer wearing someone’s yearly salary.
It was only when you got past those things that you would see his hands, which were human, but with red, scabrous skin and thick, wicked black claws instead of fingernails, that you then may suspect that what you were dealing with might not be entirely human.
As I approached, his head turned to track me right up to the door, at which point he cleared his throat from inside his head-cage. “A moment, Darkstar.” He spoke in a plummy, high-class British tenor that brought to mind palaces, powdered wigs, and Bond villains.
I stopped, apprehensive. “Hey, bill.”
No, that wasn’t a typo. His name was lowercase. It sounded lowercase—something muted the noise when it passed your lips. It was disconcerting, and never stopped being that.
“First of all, a reminder—” He raised a black talon and pointed to a plaque next to the doors.
It read:
NO WEAPONS
NO POWERS
ABSOLUTELY NO FIGHTING
TRANSGRESSORS WILL BE PUNISHED
I felt my lips frowning petulantly against my own wishes. “I never start anything.”
“And that is why you are still alive,” bill said. “However, management has come to believe that you’re something of an…albatross.”
“Well I think I’m blossoming into a beautiful swan,” I said flatly. “You know, if I have to be a bird.”
He chuckled Britishly. “Quite so, quite so.”
I did my best not to scowl. I’d seen how bill handled transgressors and I didn’t want to pick that fight, absolutely. “Well, I’ll try not to honk too much or shit on the roof.” I made to walk in.
“Secondly,” he said, stopping me in my tracks, “I should mention, Fury turned down quite the offer earlier.”
My eyebrows knitted. “Offer? For what?”
I saw something glinting between the slats of his cage, obsidian and shiny. Eyes.
“Your whereabouts,” he said, voice silky. “The information is, shall we say, in demand, with stocks trending ever upward.”
I stared hard at him. He simply watched me back.
“Who?” I finally asked, voice low.
“Ah, but I do not believe you possess anything valuable enough to offer me for that many names,” bill said.
I felt my fists clenching again, and cast a look over my shoulder. Eyes watched us. Me. People in colors. Few of them friendly.
I looked away quickly. “Thanks, bill.”
“Of course, young miss,” he said, polite. “I thought it pertinent to inform you, given that you are quite the hot commodity at the moment.” His voice dropped into a poisonously seductive register, falling three octaves. “You could make quite the killing.”
“I’ll do my best not to,” I said, and then walked inside without another word. My spine tingled as I did.
As soon as I pushed the doors open, a near-tangible wall of sonic force nearly blasted me back outside. The full twenty-nine person live band on stage was in the middle of a swing number that was, indeed, swinging for the fences. They all wore facial coverings, but you didn’t have to look hard to see they had the same skin condition as bill.
If the outside would have looked at home on the Vegas Strip, the inside could have been transplanted from The Great Gatsby with minimal changes. Everything was palatial, glamorous, indulgent. Dancers crowded the floor, shoes skating over intricately patterned white and gold marble. Everything was lit by chandeliers with crystals cleverly arranged to resemble the Sanctum City Skyline from any angle. One corner was entirely dedicated to gamblers, a fully functional miniature casino. Another, dining tables, with meals being brought by staff dressed similarly to bill and the band. A long bar took up one entire side of the cavernous space. Drinks flowed by the gallon.
No money changed hands. The only currency good in Club Hellfire was favors and information.
And business was booming.
bill’s voice in my head echoed: You could make quite the killing.
I shivered.
This was where things happened in the Skip. Given management’s attitude towards violence, it was as close to a neutral ground as you could ask for in a district filled with fugitives, refugees, career criminals, and supervillains. Deals were made, territorial boundaries were drawn, and disputes were mediated. And if you had a juicy secret, you could get a line of credit that was good for a night of drinking and gambling that could make you forget the oppression, starvation, and violence just on the other side of the wall.
My eyes tracked towards the upper balcony overlooking the dance floor. It was for VIPs—faction leaders, gang bosses, villains with territory. I saw who I was looking for and made my way towards the stairs. I couldn’t fly up. No powers inside.
There was a security staff person waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He was built and dressed similarly to bill, but without the head-cage or silver suit, just a black mask and matching clothing. He wordlessly pulled the velvet rope blocking the stairs aside for me. He never spoke, but he always knew who was allowed where. Once, I’d seen him turn back a shapeshifter trying to sneak by. I didn’t ask how he knew, and I doubt anyone else did either. His mask had no eyeholes.
At the top of the stairs, a series of lounges spread across the floor. It was less busy up here, but considerably more intense. Almost everyone was wearing colors of some sort, and the ones who weren’t didn’t need them. The scarred, vicious-looking hobgoblin in the corner didn’t need a costume to broadcast that he was a bad guy. It was also completely silent, aside from the band music still thumping below. I had noticed that, no matter how close you got to any booth, you’d never be able to hear any of the conversation happening inside them unless you were a part of them.
I went straight to the back corner, where I'd seen him in his customary spot.
“He” was a man in a tight, unarmored bodysuit of red, black, and yellow. He had a sort of hypermasculine, idealized appearance, with thick muscles, a heavy brow, and a permanent five o’clock shadow. He sat among a group of villains that were the polar opposite of toothless, representing the single most powerful alliance on this side of the Wall.
He was Hyperion, one of the top five most powerful supervillains on the planet, creator of our current stalemate, and de facto leader of the Skip.
He stood when he saw me coming, the conversation at the table cutting off—probably. I couldn’t hear it, but everybody’s mouths stopped moving. He was tall, probably well over six-and-a-half feet.
He stepped out of the booth, eyes burning with perpetual heat, and raised his fist.
I flinched.
His knuckles stroked my cheekbone tenderly. “Anna. You’re okay. Thank God.”
He was also, I guess, my boyfriend?
It’s a long story.
I let him caress me—he didn’t like it when I pulled away—and looked past him. I saw the others in the booth react, which could have been captured and turned into a fairly decent Renaissance painting studying the spectrum of human emotion.
Ripper, the ravening berserker in the denim jacket, grinned leeringly with his chrome teeth. He leaned back in his seat and winked at me.
In contrast, Voidwalker sat huddled in her ragged grey robes, glared, thin lips pulled slightly up in disgust. She didn’t like me. She was also the second closest person to Hyperion. I had put two and two together a while back and found the end of the equation exhausting.
Then there was Siege, the consummate professional in their most casual tactical gear. Their only reaction was to scan the room for threats, something they didn’t need an excuse to do anyway. They didn’t have any of their guns—no weapons—but they had been allowed to keep their plundered SCAR hardened ultratech armor, which let them operate at the upper bounds of human physical capability. Still well below most physically gifted metahumans, but their combat capabilities weren’t their selling point.
There was another, in the in the ragged garb of a vagabond, but I didn’t look at him.
Hyperion lowered his hand. “I’ve been worried. There’s been talk.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Um. Yeah, I heard. bill said something.”
“SCAR increased their bounty on you. Amnesty for the metahuman that turns you in. I guess they didn’t approve of your—” His eyes darkened and he flicked his fingers dismissively. “—ACT testing after all.”
I already knew they hadn’t. They had insisted on having a full platoon of soldiers and heavy weapons trained on me the entire time. I was pretty sure the only reason they hadn’t just opened fire was Alex sitting in and glaring them all down. I’m not sure if she could have taken all of them, but she could have taken some of them, and they were fundamentally cowards.
The other test-takers had been extremely alarmed.
“About that,” I said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “I have good news.”
He frowned.
I took a deep breath and looked Hyperion in the eyes. “Jason, it worked. Aurora University accepted me. The plan can go ahead.”
Hyperion—Jason—didn't answer at first. I watched a dozen potential reactions forming behind his eyes. I was almost tempted to reach out with my mind and see which one was most likely to fully manifest, but the idea of hearing someone else’s thoughts in my head again, even a single person, twisted my stomach more even than his rage would.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Behind him, Ripper leaned forward. “Say what now? Hero school? What’s that about?”
We both ignored him.
After a couple moments, Hyperion finally sighed. “Anna, I thought we agreed that plan was insane.”
I did my best to keep my voice level, unchallenging. “No, you said you thought it was insane because they would never let me in. But since the HERO Act is extrajudicial, I was never formally charged with a crime, and Alex said the university has a special privilege to reach out to ‘at risk’ metahumans.”
“Every part of that sounds like a pipedream.”
“I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real, Jason. I’ve got the acceptance letter on my kitchen table right now.”
His lips twisted, and he abruptly spun around, walked back to the booth, and retook his seat. The rest of the group looked between the two of us, confused—except, of course, Siege, who merely looked distantly curious.
He gestured to me. “Okay. You’ve got a job. Pitch it and let’s see what the team thinks.”
“I don’t like it,” Ripper immediately said, chipper.
I glared at him. “Bite me.”
“No thanks,” he said, breezy. “I’ve eaten.” He snapped his teeth at me playfully—they came together with surprisingly loud metallic clanks.
I guess I walked into that one.
After a second, I gathered myself, and made my case to the most influential villains in the Skip.
I began: “We’re all going to die.”
After a beat, Ripper let out a snort and started chuckling. “Nice opener. Really gets the audience invested.”
“Shut up,” Voidwalker said, voice tight. “So we can get this over with.”
“Yes,” hissed the man I refused to acknowledge, sibilant and silky, like a knife through flesh. I could feel his malicious glee from beneath his shadowed hood. “Do continue. This should be amusing.”
Siege, of course, said nothing, listening attentively. Such a pro.
I waited for them to finish. “Sure, laugh. Dismiss me. But every day, SCAR gets more aggressive, and every day, our food supplies get scarcer. We’ve nearly fished out the Undersling. The heroes fight us every time we strike outside the Skip, and our smuggling lanes are getting found out and shut down one by one. The official relief shipments are getting smaller and smaller, and people are getting hungrier. Soon, the gang leaders are going to start going to war for supplies just to keep their children fed.”
At that, they all shared a glance.
There were two widely accepted laws in the Skip. The first was, don’t start shit in Club Hellfire. Even if security didn’t get to you, it was too valuable a factor in interterritorial politics to be destroyed in some fight. You could turn the entirety of the Skip’s metahuman population against you if you weren’t very, very careful.
The other was more universal, and more brutally enforced.
We called it the Bogeyman’s Law. Don’t hurt kids. If you do, pray your peers kill you before the Bogeyman gets a hold of you, because no matter how painful the death they deal you may be, his would be worse, and drawn out far longer.
I still remembered the purging of the Nihilists, a gang that had preached despair and had reveled in hedonism in all of the wrong ways. The day they had finally overstepped themselves, the streets had flowed with blood and rang with screams as they all slowly—so slowly—learned what real despair was.
Ironically, the Skip was probably, for the moment, one of the safest places on the planet to live, if you met the Bogeyman’s occasionally hazy definition of what constituted a child.
Voidwalker said, “Nobody risks widespread conflict. Not when a child might be hurt by carelessness.”
“If the children are going to starve anyway, why wouldn’t you?” I shrugged. “He doesn’t care if it’s violence or starvation. If you’re responsible for them, it’s your fault. If they start raiding each other, there’s a chance they might get some food, and someone else has to deal with the Bogeyman coming when their kids starve.”
“But that will just mean that the others will have to take responsibility for that territory and those children,” Voidwalker said.
I continued her thought. “Further straining food supplies, further encouraging violence, and so on, until we all die.”
“I’m not afraid of the Bogeyman,” Hyperion snapped.
“Then be afraid of everyone else,” I snapped back. I saw his eyes flash, but I pressed on. “What happens when the mundies get fed up with us? What happens when metahumans start turning up dead in their sleep with knives in their throats, or get sold out to SCAR stormtroopers by their own henchmen?”
He sneered. “I’m even less afraid of mundies, Anna. There’s nobody in the Skip who could hurt me.”
Ripper coughed.
I ignored him. “But there are dozens of people outside of it who could.”
He stood, his temper starting to overflow. Fire ignited in his hands and started to crawl up his arms. “And if they so much as breathe the air here, I’ll turn everything into ash and melted slag.”
“And then whoever is left will kill you, and then we’ll be dead,” I half shouted, my own temper also rising. “So, as I said at the start, we’re all going to die!”
The silence afterward was a palpable thing, and for a second I was sure Jason was about to do something unwise.
It was, unexpectedly, Siege who broke the silence. “She’s right.”
Everyone looked at them.
“One of me has been tracking the food tonnage of the relief shipments,” they said, their eyes distant. “We’re looking at them right now. Every week, they shave almost a full ton. We can put together the information for you all to look at later.”
Troubled, Voidwalker said, “How long until what she says comes to pass?”
Siege took a breath. “Hard to say. To feed a million-and-a-half people? I’d guess we’re already pretty close. Maybe a year. Maybe less if they keep hitting our unofficial lines.”
“I can fix that,” Hyperion said. The flames on his arms were dying. “They’ll change their tune if I level a few city blocks. We’ll demand more food and get them to back off.”
Ripper chimed in, “Killing a bunch of people to stop them from killing a bunch of people? Bold move, boss.”
“And that’s a card you can only play once,” Siege said, steady and calm. “Not to mention, it’s almost a certainty that you’ll catch some children in the attack. Even if you can take the Bogeyman, it’ll change things.”
A little voice in my head was too busy screaming at all the talk of casual mass murder to chime in, which was probably a good thing for me. Siege was making my point better than I could.
“We can make a deal,” Hyperion said, stubborn. “The Council or the Zaibatsu.”
“The Council is only here for their experiments and the Zaibatsu isn’t really in the exporting business,” Siege countered. “I believe their official stance is literally ‘the West can burn.’”
Through clenched teeth, Hyperion growled, “That’s why we’ll be very persuasive.”
Siege nodded once, but something about the gesture made it clear it wasn’t agreement, just acknowledgement.
“Right, well, I may just be a simple country boy with weird teeth,” Ripper said, “but I’m still confused about something. Even if all of that is true, how is Anna going to college gonna solve it? Is she gonna impress the heroes so much they feed us out of pity, or…?”
Everyone looked at me again.
Jason sat back down and rolled his fingers, indicating I should get on with the rest of the pitch.
I put my thoughts in order. “Okay. So. Who can tell me where Aurora University is?”
The man I refused to acknowledge raised his hand. I didn’t acknowledge him.
Siege answered, “The location is unknown.” They shot the man in the hood a sideways glance. “Reports say it’s somewhere out on Lake Superior, but it’s never been seen on satellites, flyovers, or by naval traffic. Some reports suggest they possess some kind of cloaking measure, but information on the subject is intentionally contradictory.”
“Thanks Siege,” I said. “I’m glad I chose to outline my plan with the Socratic conspiracy method now.”
I saw their mouth twitch, and they nodded at me.
“Nobody has ever set foot on campus without permission,” I said. “Which by default makes it the most secure place on the planet.”
“If I knew where to look, I could get past any cloaking,” Voidwalker said.
“Okay, well, you go start looking,” I said sweetly. “I’m sure you’ll find it. See you soon.”
She narrowed her eyes at me and didn’t respond.
“Alright,” Ripper said, impatient. “Can we please skip to the part where you joining a sorority somehow saves our lives?”
“I won’t be joining a sorority,” I said. “I’ll be finding the Vault of Erebus.”
Once again, the silence after I spoke was thick.
Until Ripper sighed dramatically. “The what?”
“The nothing,” Hyperion said. “It’s insane.”
Siege answered, not taking their eyes off me. “It’s an…urban legend. Over the past century, superheroes have confiscated innumerable dangerous items, ultratech, and artifacts that have never been seen again. There’s good data suggesting none of it ever got back into circulation. Certain items would be impossible to hide if they were active in the world. This led to the—” They looked impressed in my direction for a moment. “—fairly obscure theory that there was a secret stash of invaluable, potentially world-shattering weapons somewhere in the world, buried beneath all of the safeguards magic and metas could provide.”
Ripper scratched his neck. “And it’s at a school? And not some blacksite in the desert?”
“Think about it,” I said. “It’s the perfect place. An island nobody can find by any means, hidden from every known source of tracking, surrounded by powerful metahumans twenty-four seven to keep it safe.”
“Why not Pharos?” Ripper asked. “Seems like a better spot.”
“Nothing important is in Pharos,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “And besides. Who is going to hide something in literally the biggest manmade landmark ever?”
“Also, Pharos has been breached,” Siege said. Slower, they added, “This is assuming the Vault even exists, Anna.”
“It has to,” I said. “Where else would all of that stuff be?”
“Bluntly,” they said, “anywhere else. I think a decent counterpoint is, why would they put all their eggs in one basket? I’ve always assumed things that important are important enough to stash individually.”
“It’s insane,” Hyperion said again.
My knuckles cracked. “Stop saying that. I’m not crazy.”
He stood so fast that even Siege jumped, faster than was possible for any human. I took a step backwards, my heartbeat suddenly pounding in my ears. He crossed the space between us before my foot hit the floor behind me and suddenly his face was almost touching mine.
“Do not ever tell me what to do,” he said. “Do you understand me?”
I looked away, tried to talk, couldn’t.
“Answer me,” he said. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw fire running up his arms again.
My throat was too tight to form words, so I nodded, expressionless.
“So,” Ripper said slowly. “We’re all doomed and there might be, maybe, a big stockpile of superweapons around a bunch of dumb, drunk college kids. Maybe it’s just that simple brain of mine, but I’m still hazy on the plan part of the plan.”
I tried to say something, but Jason was still looming over me.
He put a hand around the back of my head and turned my face towards his. As he touched me, his mental presence in my mind ignited, and I knew I was in danger. I tried to look away, but he held me firmly, and all of my strength was less than a gentle suggestion compared to his.
Then, unexpectedly, he pressed his forehead gently to mine. “Anna. Please. Don’t make me do anything I’ll regret. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Jason,” Siege said.
Jason let me go and straightened up. “Finish, Anna.”
I had to take a few breaths to calm my heart before I could hear myself speak again. “I—I’ve been accepted into the school. I can go there, find out where it is, and then we have everything we need to take the fight to the superheroes.”
“So you’re just gonna waltz into a secret, secure facility with contraband so dangerous it’s a legend, and then fuck off with everything you can fit in your arms?” Ripper asked. If he gave the tiniest shit about the interpersonal drama playing out in front of him, he didn’t show it.
“No,” I said. “I go in, find it, get all of you inside, and then we fuck off with everything we can fit in our arms.”
“Oh, well, that sounds fun then,” Ripper said brightly. “I’m all for it. Count me in.”
Jason turned and glared at him. “We haven’t called for a vote yet.”
“Well, when we do, I vote yes,” Ripper said. “It all sounds loony. I figure it’ll be worth it just for the shits and giggles.”
Jason shook his head. “Fine. We might as well vote. Everything else is details.”
“That’s not all—”
He held up a hand in front of my face. “Enough, Anna. I’m done talking about this.”
“I say yes, too,” Voidwalker said suddenly.
I stared at her.
“Send her to the school, Jason,” she continued. “At worst, she’ll be gone and SCAR will settle down for a little while. That’s a win-win in my book.”
There it was.
“I vote no,” the man I refused to acknowledge said smugly. “I’m unconvinced at every level and mildly annoyed that I’ve been made to listen to the insane ramblings of a common Carrie. It wasn’t nearly as amusing as I hoped it would be.”
It took all of my restraint to not gather up every bit of energy I could and blast him into fucking orbit. The only reason I didn’t was because I was fairly sure Jason would stop me.
“Also no,” Jason said, eyes locked on me. “It’s crazy, Anna. It’s too many longshots, and even if all of those pay off, it’s too many unknown variables. We have options here. We should all stay here.” He touched my cheek again. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t look at him. My eyes were glued to Siege.
They were staring right back at me. I thought I could see a thousand networked brains calculating. Maybe I could. Maybe the force of so much thought was enough to just slightly bleed through even my new mental defenses.
After almost a full thirty seconds of thinking, they shook their head. “I vote no. She’s right about our predicament, but her plan is, at best, speculative, at every single level. We should start considering other options for the future, though.”
“I know it’s there,” I said desperately. I felt all of my strength fleeing my body. “Please, Siege.”
“I’m sorry, Anna,” he said, not really sounding sorry. It was all business to him. “Unless you have some kind of concrete evidence…?”
I did, but as I tried to form the words, my mind rebelled, and they disappeared down a well.
“So it’s a no.” Jason he reached up and stroked my face again. “Anna, you’ve got such a sharp mind and a good heart. We need them in reality, not chasing legends. Help us come up with a different—”
I jerked away angrily. “Don’t touch m—”
I spun to the ground, dazed. Only after a couple seconds of recovering on my hands and knees did I realize he had slapped me.
My vision swam, but I still saw that all activity on the balcony had come to a screeching halt, everyone staring in our direction.
And that was all I had time to see before his fist bunched in my hair and yanked me back up to my feet.
He pulled me back against him and whispered in my ear, “What did I say?”
This time, I was able to answer perfectly cogently. It was the strangest thing. Nothing held my voice back. My heartbeat stayed completely within normal thresholds, maybe a little elevated. I didn’t even feel my face flushing, aside from where his handprint was going to be.
Because this felt normal. Familiar. Comfortable.
Right at home.
I said, “You told me not to tell you what to do.”
“And you did it again. So whose fault is this?”
“Mine,” I said, the answer so easy that it almost felt true.
He turned me around by hair and made me look up at him. He gazed down at me, looking lost, distressed even. “Why do you make me crazy?”
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically.
“I know you are,” he said. “You have a good heart.”
I wanted to puke, but I didn’t.
I especially wanted to puke when he leaned down and kissed me on the lips, still holding my hair by the fistful. I didn’t, because I was pretty sure I had already lived through an ending like that once.
Or rather, hadn’t.
He pulled his head back, and it was only because I saw my blood on his face that I realized my lip had split. He didn’t seem to notice, or care.
Finally, he released his grip. “Go home, Anna,” he said softly, sounding deflated. “We’ll talk later.”
I didn’t wait. I didn’t look at anyone else before I left. I turned on my heel and went back downstairs, across the floor, and out the front door, ignoring the stares I drew as blood dripped from my chin.
I stopped slightly past bill. Loudly, I told him, “I’ve got information for you.”
The huge bouncer made a delicate, inquisitive noise.
“I’m going to be in Memorial Square for the next hour,” I said, voice going harsher as I spoke. “Anybody who wants a shot can come take it.”
“I see,” he said behind. “And what would you like in return for this informa—”
I didn’t hear anything else, because I was already flying. Supervillain eyes followed me as I soared back into the darkness above, speculative.
Who knows. Maybe I would kill someone.
Because I wanted to.