Supervillainess (Part One) (16 page)

“To talk.” The supervillain tapped the arm
of the chair beside him.

Kimber sat, not because General Savage
wanted him to, but because he suddenly realized how he was going to
deal with the twins. If they weren’t going to try to curb their
behavior, maybe he could convince their father to rein them in.

Stretching his neck back, Kimber grimaced.
He was stiff and sore, but at least he was starting to feel more
like himself and less like he woke up in a stranger’s body.

“No painkillers,” General Savage said.

“Pardon?” Kimber replied.

“I told them not to use painkillers. Didn’t
want to trigger your addiction.”

Kimber’s breath caught.

“You’re surprised I’d look into your
background before inviting you here?” General Savage asked,
amused.

“Invitation implies you asked me instead of
kidnapping me,” Kimber answered.

“I figured it was time for us to meet.”

“How so?”

General Savage handed him a newspaper. It
was dated what he assumed was today, the day after the incident at
the ER.

“Wow. I was out for a day,” he muttered.

Doctor Hero Stands up to
Villain, Saves More Lives!
Screamed the
headline.
Sand City Finally Has a
Superhero!
Claimed a second.

“I wish they would stop this,” Kimber
muttered and dropped the newspaper on the ground. How long would it
take for someone to discover the truth, that the fire and ER
incident were his fault because of his association with the crime
family?

“You don’t want to be a superhero?” General
Savage asked.

“Of course not. I want your family out of my
life.”

General Savage retrieved the newspaper.
“Even Reader?”

“Especially Reader. She’s the reason this
mess started.”

“Interesting. I thought you had a part in
this.” He held out the newspaper again.

“A part in what?” Kimber asked. “The ER
incident?”

“No. This.” The supervillain flipped the
paper and tapped a much smaller article on the front page.

Kimber accepted the paper reluctantly and
scanned the title.

Apartment Fire Victims All Win the Lottery
on Same Day

He re-read it and then continued on to the
rest of the article, which gave no real insight into what had
happened. It listed the names and ages of all the people who won
and the date of the drawing. The chances of all of them winning on
the same day was too coincidental to be real.

“What does this have to do with me? Or being
here?” Kimber asked.

“Considering none of them had a ticket, I’d
say it’s pretty lucky your former neighbors all won the
lottery.”

“You can’t believe I had anything to do with
this. If you found out about Chicago, then you know I don’t have
that kind of money.”

“No, but I do,” General
Savage replied. “My family has a policy of
steal it, keep it
. Ninety million
dollars went missing from one of my accounts. It’s not an unusual
occurrence, but the kids usually don’t take that much. It was
funneled into the lottery commission, which was paid off to
announce winners, not winning numbers.”

Kimber listened.

“You didn’t put Reader up to this?” the
supervillain asked, looking at him straight on for the first time.
His eyes were cold, his stare direct.

“No,” Kimber replied. “You think she did
this?” He lifted the paper.

“I know one of them did. Thunder wouldn’t
dare oppose me after last year, but Reader … she has always been
too different.”

Igor’s explanation of the
twins circled in Kimber’s brain as General Savage spoke. He
recalled Igor’s hesitancy to say exactly what had been done to
Jermaine, and how the dedicated nanny held out hope for Keladry to
become the
good
kind of supervillain. The dynamics of the crime family were
beyond Kimber’s ability to understand fully, but he sensed the
supervillain beside him was pleased for some reason. It couldn’t
have been because of the loss of money, or Keladry giving it away
to help people, which seemed to act counter to what a villain
did.

“This skill of yours. How does it work?”
General Savage asked.

“Skill? You mean being a doctor?”

Another unsettling, direct, unblinking look
rested on Kimber. It left him wanting to shiver or perhaps, to move
his chair away a few inches.

“You have a skill, just as we do. Yours
appears to be blocking ours.”

“So you can’t demonstrate your superpower
when I’m around,” Kimber said. He didn’t roll his eyes but wanted
to. It was too convenient that the alleged villains with
superpowers couldn’t actually do anything superhuman at all. How
had the local media ever fallen for any of this shit?

“Correct. I assumed you were in town,
rescuing people, because you chose Sand City to start your
superhero career.”

“No.” Kimber snorted. “I’m a former drug
addict trying to make up for shitty decisions from my past. I just
want to go to work and go home to my shitty apartment. But it looks
like both of those have been burnt down.”

“You seem to be an
honest
man.” The
supervillain smiled, as if entertained by the idea someone like
Kimber existed. He rose. “My people will take you back to the
hospital.” He started away.

Kimber stood, caught off guard by the sudden
dismissal. “That’s all you wanted to know? If I have intentions of
being a superhero?”

“I also wanted to know if you were
influencing my daughter, undoing years of special
conditioning.”

“You mean torturing her as a child.”

“How else do you think supervillains are
made? Through personal suffering and disillusion.”

“She’s your
daughter
!”

“And I’ve finally found another of her
weaknesses.” This smile was chilling.

Kimber frowned. Jermaine had said something
similar. How could they both be so misinformed?

“Moving on,” Kimber said, not about to lose
his chance to confront the criminal mastermind. “Your kids are
destroying the city. Innocent people are dying horrible deaths, and
the amount of money this will cost the city to clean up is far
beyond the ninety million you’ve already lost.”

“Not sure about Chicago, but that’s what
villains do here.”

“You can stop it.”

“Why would I want to? The winner of these
games is my successor.”

“You mean the survivor, don’t you? Whichever
sibling kills the other is the winner.”

“You catch on quickly, Doc,” General Savage
replied. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of their
way. It’ll settle down when one of them is dead.”

The words shocked Kimber, as much because
they were spoken by the father of the twin who would die, as
because of the callous regard he had for those caught in the
crossfire.

“You can’t mean that,” Kimber whispered.
“You can’t want one of your own children to die.”

“I killed my parents, my brother, my uncles,
an aunt and over a hundred thousand humans to become what I am,”
the supervillain said without flinching or any sign of emotion. “My
children each have that potential. What I want is for them to
remain focused on the prize: Sand City. Whichever one of them wants
it more will win the games.”

“You’re worse than they are.”

“Where do you think they get it from?” the
supervillain replied. “For some reason, my children put you in the
middle of their games. I didn’t understand it at first, but after
meeting you, I think I do. I see opportunity here as well as they
do. I’m glad I made you part of this.”

Kimber didn’t want to know what that meant.
“If you won’t stop them, I’ll find someone who will.”

“Good luck.” General Savage disappeared into
the darker interior of the compound on whose veranda Kimber
stood.

What the fuck was wrong with everyone in
this family? Kimber couldn’t imagine how this much dysfunction
existed in one place. Compared to her brother and father, Keladry
was beginning to look moderate, despite being willing to burn down
an entire apartment building while its residents slept.

Lifting the paper once more, Kimber studied
the article. Had Keladry really stolen her father’s money and made
millionaires out of the homeless families from the apartment fire?
If so, why did the General want to know if Kimber was involved?

…
If you want to help
someone, help those people who are homeless because you decided to
burn down my apartment building.

The words he’d spoken to her in anger
emerged from the depths of his mind, and he began to connect the
dots.

Keladry had acted because of what he said.
Her father noticed, as did her brother. They did some digging and
found … him.

“You did this because of me? For me? In my
name?” he asked the newspaper under his breath, not understanding
her motivation. She had been an absolute bitch to deal with as a
patient and every second he’d known her since she left. How could
anyone mistake her motivations as being directed, or influenced, by
him?

In the end, it was too far of a stretch for
him to believe he had been the one to convince her to do anything,
let alone something decent. It had to be a coincidence.

“Mister Wellington.” A woman in a driver’s
cap stood in the hallway. “Please follow me.”

Kimber left the newspaper on a nearby chair
and trailed her into the compound. They walked through long
hallways and short, past intersections leading into other parts of
the supervillain’s lair and down into an underground basement
featuring dozens of antique and collectible cars. The driver slid
behind the wheel of a black Rolls Royce.

Kimber got in back and put on his seatbelt.
He gazed out the window as the vehicle whisked him down a winding
road from the top of the mountain he didn’t know existed to the
bottom and onward to the freeway.

He dreaded discovering who had been hurt and
how bad the damage was to the hospital but found himself
preoccupied by another thought.

Was it really possible that Keladry had
given the residents of his former apartment building money for the
sole reason that he told her to?

The baffling notion she
had
helped
the
same people whose homes she had destroyed without a second thought
sent Kimber’s mind spinning in loops. To think Keladry could modify
the behavior and a world view beaten into her since she was a
child, that she had done something almost good, because he had told
her it was the right thing to do …

Something about her has
always confused me,
Kimber admitted. He had
never viewed her as strictly a patient after the first night in his
apartment. He couldn’t explain what he didn’t understand, except
that Keladry captured his attention in a way no one else in his
recent history had. Was it their connection, the night she told him
who had almost killed her? The sense of destiny that took hold of
him whenever they crossed paths?

It was also possible there was no
correlation between what he said and what Keladry did, that he was
once again trying to read too deeply into the words and intentions
of a woman who belonged in a psych ward. Kimber tried to reason his
way out of thinking well of the crazy woman, but kept circling back
to the newspaper article.

Keladry and the rest of her family were
lunatics.

Then why did he once more find it impossible
to purge her completely from his thoughts?

Kimber stepped out of the Rolls and closed
the door. The sleek, dark car slid away, leaving him on the
sidewalk. His bare feet were immersed in a cold puddle, and he
contemplated the latest problem in front of him.

One wing of the hospital appeared to be out
of commission, if the darkened windows were any indication. The ER
and ambulance entrance were cordoned off by police tape. He was
effectively homeless and possibly, jobless, unless the
administration had transferred the ER staff temporarily into other
departments. Familiar despair slid through him, though he tried to
tell himself this time, his loss of identity and purpose was
different. He had done it to himself in Chicago.

In Sand City, he’d had both stripped from
him.

The circumstances were different, but his
feelings remained the same.

He had failed. Again.

Kimber wiped his face with his hands, trying
to clear away the negative thoughts threatening to drag him down.
After his meeting with the city’s supervillain, he couldn’t help
wondering what would come next. The city had to be out of surprises
for him by now. Even if it weren’t, he began to think nothing else
could faze him again.

“Doctor Wellington?” a curious voice
called.

Kimber glanced towards the group of people
crossing the road then back, recognizing the nurses Gary and Anna.
Warmth crept up his neck as he realized he had neither shoes nor
jacket to keep the drizzle off. He looked homeless – which he
was.

“We’ve been worried sick! You disappeared
yesterday after the bombing!” Anna exclaimed.

They excused themselves from the other
members of their party and approached him. Kimber shoved his hands
into his pockets and tried to portray normal, whatever that was
anymore.

“Yeah. I ended up in a medical center across
town,” he hedged. “How about you? You guys okay?”

“Bruises,” Gary replied. “Because of you, we
all made it out of there alive.”

Except for the three
people who expired while I napped,
Kimber
said silently, recalling the bodies under sheets that had been
tucked away from public sight behind the nurses’
station.