Soon I Will Be Invincible (28 page)

She puts up her fists.

“You really want to do this?” I ask, giving her my “Stay back; I’m crazy” look. “Last chance. I’m tougher than you think.”

She crosses the line. The rest doesn’t take long, and I’d actually rather not describe it. Let’s just say I have the sense to fold up after a couple of rounds, and she leaves me tied to the pylon next to CoreFire’s. I wish he hadn’t seen that. She’s not even breathing hard.

Then she turns her attention to the machine. With a little admiration, I like to think, a little regret. Both of us watch her.

I try to delay the inevitable. “Are you hoping you’ll get a medal? Maybe you’ll get your boyfriend back.”

She ignores me. She’s thinking of something else, and after a moment she starts to speak in a low voice. I’m not even sure who she’s talking to at first.

“You must have wondered what happened to me. Didn’t you? I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

She sounds almost upset. Her back is to us as she tries to figure out what to break first. She starts yanking out wires in strategic places. The turbine hum starts running back down the scale in a cosmic diminuendo. I can smell something burning.

“It was that time Baron Ether teamed up with the Living Diamond. I was still writing, but it was a dead end for me. My stories sucked, and I was writing too many superhero profiles to pay the bills. I’d become just CoreFire’s girl. I needed a new angle.

“Just by chance, I found out where the two of them were hiding—they called for CoreFire, and I answered the phone and got the address. I followed them to an abandoned chemical factory and crept inside with my camera and sensible shoes.”

She spots Laserator’s reflecting lens. Crash, tinkle.

“It was the chance I needed, a real story I could break, but I went a little too far and they caught me. I ran for it, like always, and I tripped and fell, just like always. Toppled right off a catwalk and into a vat of some vile liquid they’d just mixed up together.

“I went home and showered, but already I felt a change, a stirring in my blood. A power. I went up to my room and stood there, looking out an open window at the street outside, white houses. It was early spring, and the breeze blew in. I thought of Jason and whether I should call him, but I didn’t.

“I stood in the center of my room. It kept building until I was white-hot. My hand set the curtains on fire; I seared bare footprints into the carpet. Naked, I made my way very slowly down the hall and through the sitting room, then out onto the lawn.

“I looked at myself, changed, transparent and invulnerable. I stood there with my hardened skin cooling, ticking, in the dawn light. I wasn’t going home anymore.

“It only seems right I should get superpowers; if the zeta beam had hit me, maybe I would have had CoreFire’s—did you ever think of that?

“I knew I had a decision to make, the same one you did, and Jason. I didn’t have to be Erica the klutzy girlfriend anymore. So I decided to be Lily, savior of the thirty-fifth century, the future girl without a past.”

She looks over the wreckage, making sure there’s really no way for me to repair it. There isn’t.

“One last thing. I really did go to the future once, you know, and saw the Blight. It was real. And you know where it came from? Costa Rica. It was that stupid hammer that started it all when it broke.”

“But…there isn’t any Blight. I moved the hammer. I shut it down.”

“I know. I guess you saved the world after all. Take care of yourself, Doctor Impossible.”

She kisses me on the cheek, then looks into my eyes for a moment, almost smiling. She stands in the entrance for a moment, rainwater sheeting off her back, then vanishes into the night.

CoreFire looks after her, too, with a funny expression on his face that I’ve never seen before. He looks almost thoughtful. I can’t think of anything to say, and apparently he can’t either, so we just sit there tied to our pillars. And that’s how the New Champions find us when they finally escape from my dungeon.

CHAPTER TWENTY

GIRL MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

         For a while, there’s fighting overhead—tremendous blows and counterblows that seem to shake the whole fortress. Then an eerie silence except for the hum of Doctor Impossible’s machines. Then I hear footsteps coming closer and I think I’m finally going to meet CoreFire. But of course it isn’t. It’s the last new Champion.

“So this is where the popular kids hang out,” Lily says.

“How did you get in here?” Blackwolf asks. “Were you…”

“I know how it looks, but no, I’m not with him.” She looks us over, her eyes moving from one to another. “But I wasn’t entirely frank with you guys, either. About CoreFire.”

“I know he’s alive,” Blackwolf says. “The Pharaoh tried to kill him, so he faked his own death.”

“He fucking what?” Damsel’s head snaps around, for once taken off guard. Even Mister Mystic makes a noise behind his gag.

“Is that what he told you?” Lily asks. She sounds incredulous herself. “He lost up there, did you know that? The Doctor beat the hell out of him. Whipped him senseless.”

“Wait, wasn’t CoreFire your boyfriend? Or were you just pretending about that, too?” Blackwolf looks angry, but I wonder if it’s only because he’s been outsmarted for once. “Were you working for Doctor Impossible this whole time?”

“Jesus, no.” Lily rolls her eyes. “Look, it was a stupid mistake. It’s what I wanted to tell you; I just didn’t think you’d listen. You want to know what really happened to CoreFire? Your hero friend?” She looks us all over, slowly. He wasn’t my friend, I want to remind her. I never even got to meet him.

“We met at a warehouse party in London, you know, one of those fringe powers things. He was slumming, I guess, with some friends I didn’t know. I already knew I wanted to switch sides, and we sort of talked. He wanted to go away for the weekend, to this place he knew in Costa Rica. He said he could just fly us there, that it would take a couple of hours. Anyway, I went. I was going to be a heroine now, right?

“We found a resort area he knew, abandoned, but a cool place to take girls to, I guess. But when we got there, it was obvious someone else had found it. When we found out it was the Pharaoh, I thought he was going to die laughing. You know, that villain from the seventies, with the makeup? So this was a hero fight ready to happen, and my first collar for your side. We all used to make fun of him, like the time he couldn’t find his own sarcophagus at the Met. We’d just bring him in and slap him in jail for a while, and I’d be in from the cold.”

“But wait a minute. Jason said it was Doctor Imp—” Blackwolf looks caught completely off guard for once. “God damn it.”

“Yeah. I thought so.” Lily doesn’t look smug at least. But she’s been waiting to tell this.

“We split up—CoreFire set me down on a hill nearby, told me to just watch the show, see how a pro does it. I only got in close at the end. Pharaoh was tired by then. He hadn’t had time to put on his gold makeup. He’d been swinging that hammer for hours; his scraggly graying hair was matted; sweat ran down from his beard and under his armor. He gave me a look, like he knew why I was there. We’d met a couple of times.

“Whatever else you can say about him, the Pharaoh could take a punch. CoreFire’s strength was irresistible, but the Pharaoh’s hammer made him absolutely impervious to harm.

“It’s like we always used to talk about, who could beat whom when it came to just power on power. Blockade versus the Living Diamond. Nick Napalm or Aquamarine. Grab Bag against the Bricoleur. A matchup like CoreFire and the Pharaoh was anyone’s guess. How do you calculate it? Zeta energy against magical relic. Pharaoh had always been tougher than anyone bothered to measure, and if he had put his mind to it, he could have been a real threat, instead of a standing joke. Each one had a force inside him, fueling him, and now we were going to see what it was worth. When they met…something gave.

“The fight covered about a mile, back and forth; then it went down to the beach. The hammer was glowing; the rubies on it were incandescent. It was obviously the only thing keeping him standing. There were gouges in the landscape where CoreFire had swung and missed. The paint was coming off of it, and underneath I could see symbols carved there. CoreFire wasn’t worried, more like baffled. Frustrated. You could see the confusion spreading across his face—why wouldn’t this guy go down? His hands hurt from punching him. And he was sick of the Hammer of Ra coming back and catching him in the face in front of this girl.

“Then the Pharaoh…Nelson…hit him straight in the chest, knocked him back a few steps and he went to one knee. I saw CoreFire’s face then. I thought, Oh God, he’s going to kill him.

“I started to run in. CoreFire went a few feet off the ground, taking his time to deliver his old Sunday punch, a massive roundhouse, harder than he’d usually dare to hit a living power. More the kind of thing when he’d smash an asteroid or sink a ship. The Pharaoh blocked two-handed, and the hammer…broke. It cracked down its face. I heard a sizzling crackle that seemed to come from everywhere at once. I smelled an otherworldly whiff of alien or god.

“The hammer was at the center of a slow explosion, a cold blossom of negative energy, like a fluid. It had splintered; one of the pieces went through CoreFire’s biceps, and he was bleeding. Whatever technology or madness made the Pharaoh invincible, it was coming out. The effect was spreading; it dragged at me. Light and color smeared toward it. In another moment, we might all have been sucked in. I had a sudden thought that it would consume the world, or our whole dimension. Maybe Mister Mystic knows.

“The Pharaoh shouted at me to run. He was muttering his power word, but I don’t think it was working. I didn’t look back.

“You know I can’t fly, but I run pretty fast. I honestly don’t know what happened then. The whole valley had iced over by then. It was creeping into the sea. I honestly thought we had started the end of the world.

“There was another explosion. CoreFire got blasted miles into the air, and it must have hurt him, thrown him into that coma. I thought he was dead. I guess that’s where he got the brilliant idea of stringing it out like that. Unless it was you, Marc. It’s got your stamp on it.”

Blackwolf shrugs. Oops.

“I wanted to say something before, but…if anyone knew I’d been there, no one would have believed it wasn’t me who killed him. I guess I wanted a chance to be the good guy for a while. You would have worked it out eventually. Fatale would have, I know.”

“So what happens now?” I ask. Did we lose? Or win?

“I’m going upstairs after this, to stop that idiot from taking over the world. I’ll be gone by the time you get out of this. I just want to say…thanks for giving me a chance to be someone else for a while.”

“Lily…” I want to tell her not to go. That we need her here.

“Wait.” She walks over to where Elphin’s spear leans against the wall, hefts it once, then tosses it to Elphin through the bars. “If you’re thinking of hunting me down when this is over, forget it.” She turns to go.

I call “Good luck” after her, because someone should. She was one of us. She half-turns, nods, and walks off down the passageway.

Elphin picks up her spear and looks at it uncertainly. I stand up and spread my arms.

“Go on,” I tell her. “I’m ready this time.” The plan has formed in my head; I can see already it will work. If she hits right, like she did the last time, she can pull me out through the field that’s been trapping me. Our cells aren’t that far apart.

She frowns and takes aim. It goes through, just like before, and the barbs catch, but it doesn’t even hurt. She’s good. I let her pull me into the field. For a moment, all my systems shut down. I black out for a second, but when I come to, I’m out of my cell, and they’re all looking at me. For a moment, I’m the only superpower in the room, and they’re waiting for me to rescue them. I bend the bars of Elphin’s cage, shoot out the lamps shining into Damsel’s cell, and tear off Blackwolf’s and Rainbow’s restraints. For a second, I’m a towering figure helping the needy, forgotten, and helpless in a faraway place.

When we get to the surface, everything’s already over. Lily is gone, and smashed machinery and fragments of mirror lie everywhere. The Hammer of Ra rests on the floor, cracked and useless. It must have been some fight.

And there, tied back-to-back at the central pillar, are CoreFire and Doctor Impossible, the greatest hero and greatest villain of the age. For once, neither one has anything to say.

Lily vanished into the rain after the battle. She must have some other way of getting around, because she’s nowhere on the island—Damsel and I check the whole place. After a team vote, we decide not to look for her. Everyone is feeling pretty giddy anyway.

CoreFire himself is maybe a little disappointing. When I heard the thunder, I could hardly believe it. And now, meeting him, he’s actually kind of cute, even bigger than I expected—untied, he towers over me. But for a guy who came back from the dead, he doesn’t feel like talking much.

One thing CoreFire does do is show me one of the Doctor’s secret archives. I don’t know how he knew, but it turns out to hold the thing I’ve needed all along—the original file that Protheon kept on me. They photographed my passport and everything. They kept a record—not much, but name and medical history at least. Even a psychiatric profile. One last origin story.

There isn’t much time to sort through it before we have to leave. There’s some technical stuff I never knew before, a few hints about abilities I haven’t even tried. Biometric data explaining why I was a good candidate in the first place.

There are pictures of me, scanned from someone’s holiday Polaroids. I only barely recognize the girl in the photograph. We look like half sisters at best—I could have passed her in the street. She stands in a fuzzy sweater, smiling at whoever is taking her picture, looking lost but hopeful. And the memories are gone, 1980s Christmases and high school French and the rest. But I don’t think she was very happy. I spend a while at the databanks, downloading.

When I come out, I almost walk right into Blackwolf and Damsel, who are making out in the rain like high school kids. I feel my face go blank and slack; it’s a familiar feeling that, amnesia or not, I can tell I’ve felt before. And there’s this extra twist inside of me because it shows how much I was kidding myself all along. And although it’s just about the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t much enjoy looking at it. I could tell them more than they know, about who Lily is or what they should do with Doctor Impossible, but they don’t seem much interested in talking.

They don’t even notice me, and I try to be casual about it, like it never mattered in the first place. Everybody pretends not to see me seeing them. Elphin’s performing some Celtic victory ritual, so Mystic and I watch for a while. He even offers me his opera cloak to keep the rain off, but I decline. There’s something gallant and a little sad about him.

Then they march Doctor Impossible out, Rainbow holding him by the collar. No one’s ready to leave yet, so he’s left standing there for a while, sagging in the chains, looking around at what remains of his lair. The rain is running into his eyes and there’s a quirky kind of smile on his face, but it’s the same guy. He’s not looking his most evil with his helmet off and his hair all over the place and one black eye.

I stand there and let him get a good look at me, and he looks back. I want to grab him, shake him, make him talk to me, but what does one say on these occasions? A real hero would have all kinds of clever observations. I did at one point, but I can’t remember my stupid speech at all. He’s my nemesis, I guess, if I want one. Creator, savior, enabler, whatever he was. All these enhancements, everything that happened to me, was just fallout from his stupid, offhandedly brilliant plan, which I never even got to hear about. I’m looking at my whole life standing there, and what do you say to that?

My combat computer comes up with the answer. It starts as a growl that turns into a shriek and ends with a ferocious right cross, whose impact rattles my whole frame. He feels it—I doubt CoreFire could have done much better. It spins him almost around. His head goes back and his lanky hair follows, rainwater spraying everywhere. Even Rainbow Triumph’s mouth hangs open with surprise, and I hear applause—Blackwolf, maybe, or CoreFire.

I’m finished. I think he mutters, “Sorry,” but I’m already walking away.

I don’t know what happens next, because at this point I just wander off to another part of the island, and I’m not really paying attention. I end up down by the water, at what looks like a little harbor area, a couple loading cranes and concrete piles in the water. He must have built it early on, but it never got much use. It’s still pouring with rain.

Yes, sure, we won. Things overall are going to be okay. I don’t know it yet, but we’re all going to be famous again—some of us for the first time. Blackwolf’s corporation will get rich off of patents gleaned from Doctor Impossible’s island. Damsel’s powers are coming back stronger than ever, reborn in the light of her mother’s sun soaked into her. New senses, even a new power that will bring the ocean up over my ramparts to sweep away the remnants of the Doctor’s robot army. Her skin looks greener than before. Gills more prominent, and they work properly now. Maybe she can even breathe on her mother’s home world.