THE MARCH IN City Square is scheduled for August 9. Four days beforehand, Lyssa hits the big one-three. She’ll be devastated when she doesn’t develop powers—but that’s better than the alternative. So I keep telling myself.
Anyway, I got bigger problems on my plate. Despite my best efforts to put distance between Sherman’s strike and my exceedingly squishable self, I can’t avoid it entirely. March posters climb the wall of the Crow Building like urban ivy. Tags crop up on random lampposts across Bridgebrook: the black stencil of a henchman’s mask, an acid-green X over where a mouth should be. #HenchMarch2K23 amasses a small army of followers on Twitter, Tumblr, and beyond.
This is a movement, and it’s gaining momentum. Coasting down mountain roads at high speed. Like a car with a drunken driver, spinning toward the guardrail, out of control …
Don’t get me wrong—I want to be happy. I want to believe we have a chance, that we can make a difference. But the low, quiet scream of Amelia Lopez scratches at my bones and the roots of my teeth: an ugly reminder of what happens to those who try.
I work. I sleep. I lie. I work again.
The night before Lyssa’s birthday, Sherman and I pull up on the far side of Bridgebrook, having followed the Captain’s car. Of all the places I expected to get a job, a shawarma shop wasn’t one of them. We arrive in time to watch a pudgy Middle Eastern man pass a steaming bag to a Black guy with three rings on each finger and a pit bull straining on a leash.
“What’s going on?” Turner hisses. I catch the tail end of his question as Sherman kills the engine. “Drug trade? Dog-fighting ring?”
The customer emerges, already digging in. He catches sight of us, all in Hench uniform. Then his eyes widen and he about-turns, dragging his dog in the opposite direction, muttering “Nope, nope, nope” under his breath.
“Way more nefarious,” says the Captain, deadpan. “Zeke’s selling shawarma.”
“If he’s such an upstanding citizen,” asks Birnbaum, “why are we here?”
“Because while Zeke runs the least popular shawarma place in Bridgebrook, the only thing he’s guilty of is a few minor health food violations.”
Down the block, the man spits a mouthful of meat on the sidewalk. His pit bull snuffles at it but turns up its nose.
“And that,” finishes the Captain, “makes him good cover.”
Turner dithers behind as the Captain helps Birnbaum unfold from the passenger seat, eyeing the hurricane of flies around Zeke’s meat spit. “How’s this guy still in business?”
“He makes a more lucrative trade from keeping his mouth shut. This way.” The Captain nods at Zeke (who pointedly looks in the other direction) through the glass. He leads us around the back and down a flight of steps, unlocking the cellar door: an iron wedge on runners, glued to its frame with rust. It takes several applications of the Captain’s shoulder to break the seal. The resultant screech sounds like someone backed over the tail of a cat.
Inside: gloom. The Captain fondles the wall for a switch. Surgical-white lights snap on, revealing long rectangular tables lined with conical flasks, their contents crystallized to their sides. Plastic tubes form a giant spiderweb, crissing and crossing, offshoots feeding into test tubes stoppered with ancient, disintegrating corks. Eight small cages line the far wall, stacked two high. Some are occupied, but only by bones.
I gulp. Those better not be descendants of Mr. Bojingles.
I’ve never seen so much dust. It smothers every surface, from the hazardous substance labels on the barrels in the corner to the floor beneath our feet. The Captain’s footsteps cause miniature tornados. He leaves perfect prints, like he’s walking on the surface of the moon.
Birnbaum pulls an inhaler from his pocket and takes a preemptive huff. I wish I’d brought mine, though I haven’t had an attack since I was little. Turner looks entranced by all the villainous paraphernalia—until he realizes we’re here to clean it, at which point he starts complaining about not being a maid.
“Suck it up” is the Captain’s advice. He opens the storage closet in a billowing cloud and dislodges a stack of old dust masks. He hands Turner one, along with a brush-and-pan combo. I receive a vacuum cleaner with my dust mask, as does Birnbaum. I guess that means we’re in the Captain’s good books. I ain’t gonna complain.
I push the vacuum back and forth, back and forth, the roar loud enough to drown the rumbles of passing cars. By the time the lab gleams, I’ve had to trudge upstairs to empty the vacuum seven times, shaking it into the alley out back. Zeke stuffs his nose in a baseball magazine every time I pass.
“What’s our client got planned for all this?” I ask, mid-yawn, returning from my latest trip. I poke at a rack of petri dishes, the goop within wobbling in a disconcertingly fleshlike fashion.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to” is the Captain’s sage advice.
“My vote’s on bomb, is all.” Especially since there’s a big sack of kitty litter in the corner. “I got five dollars on them trying to blow up city hall.”
It barely counts as gallows humor. Live in any major urban area long enough in the post-Super-gene age, and this sort of thing becomes routine.
“Ten on La Caja Tunnel,” offers Birnbaum, after another gulp from his inhaler. He’s tackling the entranceway, where the dust is thinnest. “That would cause far more disruption.”
La Caja—the cage—is one of three main routes out of the city by land. It digs directly through the Andoridge mountains, which curl around us to the east, the foothills cutting us off from the next settlement along Sunnylake’s shore. You can clear the range in under ten minutes, whereas winding over the passes takes hours, especially if you trust an online map. Plenty of other tunnels puncture the mountains nowadays, but La Caja is the oldest and largest: a multilane mole hole that burrows under several million tons of rock.
Birnbaum has a point. I go cold thinking about how much devastation a villain could cause if they targeted infrastructure rather than kidnapping Mayor Darcy every week and blowing up the shabbiest parts of Bridgebrook. But thinking too hard about the VC reminds me of Jav’s gentrification conspiracy, and Amelia, and everything. Easiest to focus on cleaning.
“We’re done, right?” says Sherman sometime later, cracking out her spine. “If I keep polishing these tables, I’ll rub through them.”
The Captain checks the time on his phone. “We got thirty minutes left on our shift…”
We all groan.
The Captain groans right back. “All right, all right. Client won’t inspect until tomorrow night. We can split.”
We pack up our gear and hurry upstairs, looking forward to getting (for once) over five hours of sleep. No surprises when Zeke doesn’t wave. I’m tempted to grab shawarma—we’ve been working all night under a cloud of warm, meaty smells, and I’ve produced enough saliva to dehydrate myself—but I don’t want to spend my sister’s birthday locked in the bathroom.
The Captain, Turner, and Birnbaum all pile into the Captain’s car, after he lays trash bags on the seats to prevent the worst of the dust transfer. Off the Ford Fiesta grumbles, chugging around the first corner. Sherman taps her nails on the bike’s nearest handlebar but hesitates before climbing aboard.
“Got another meeting,” she says, real casual. “Drumming up a last bit of support for the march.”
I discover a sudden fascination with the cracks in the sidewalk, the scrawny green weeds peeking through. “Yay. Awesome.”
“Yeah.” She’s turned off her mask. A smudge of dust crowns the tip of her nose, the only flaw on her face. Kinda annoying. Gives me this ludicrous urge to thumb it away. “Just … wondering if you wanted to come this time, is all.”
I wave at the Andoridge hills, backlit by a glimmer of dawn. “Sorry. Need to get home by five or I turn into a pumpkin. Then I’ll be of no use to you at all.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, really. Feel free to hang around and watch the sunrise with me, if you want a freebie to carve for Halloween.”
Sherman starts pick-pick-picking at the stitching on the bike seat. “Funny,” she says, though no snort-laugh accompanies it.
“Okay, I get the feeling you’re going to be disappointed when I don’t transform.” I point both fingers to the far end of the street. “Maybe I should just walk.”
I don’t get very far. Sherman grabs my wrist. She digs in her heels, and—
Wow. I just stop. Like I’ve run into an invisible wall.
I keep tugging, but it’s a choice between my dignity and my shoulder socket, and I never had much of that first one. “Um. Sherman?”
Her jagged nails cut into my pulse point. The blue glow of Zeke’s bug zapper picks out every piercing, her eyes lost to rings of shadow.
Then she whirls us around and slams me back against the shawarma-shop window.
Holy fuck. She damn near picked me up. Me, half a foot taller than her and twice as wide. I should snarl, get in her face. Show her I’m every bit as Bridgebrook as she is, and like hell will I be thrown around—but right now my thought processes are mostly composed of the word guh.
“Guh,” I say.
The glass judders in its frame. Beyond it, Zeke turns another page of his magazine.
“You told me you were in,” says Sherman. She’s close. I mean, close close. Our boobs are a breath from brushing close. Her grip on my T-shirt collar tightens, reducing the diameter of my windpipe by another quarter inch. Her eyes are shards of brown glass. “Did you mean it? Are you really on our side?”
I squirm against the window. Overhead, the zapper crackles. Unlucky mosquito? Or Sherman, flexing her Superpowers? “Who else’s side would I be on? Just—it’s my sister’s birthday tomorrow, y’know? I wanna be awake for it. That’s all.”
Sherman’s eyes narrow. The zapper spits blue.
“Okay, okay! Look.” I blink the bright stain from my eyes. Focusing on her, only her. “This strike … Sherm, you can’t fight the Villain Council alone.”
“We wouldn’t be alone. That’s the whole point of working together.”
“And if we piss the Council off enough, we’ll die together, too!”
Sherman scoffs. “You’re afraid.”
I grip her fists, where they’re buried in the collar of my T-shirt. “You aren’t?”
Keep your head down. Don’t make enemies. Strictly no heroics. Any henchman who goes on strike will poke their head way aboveground, like golf balls awaiting tee-off. The VC will definitely be pissed enough to class as an enemy. I did fuck-all heroics today, but breaking two of three rules doesn’t set the best track record.
Sherman scans my face. Whatever she finds must satisfy her, because she quits trying to garrote me with my own clothing.
“Yeah,” she mutters, rubbing the back of her neck. “Honestly … Yeah. We’re all scared. And—and I’m sorry.”
I slump, resting my head on the glass. “This another of those moments where you apologize ’cause you’re in the wrong?”
Sherman adjusts the straps of her tank top, glaring a hole in the wall a few inches to my left. “I got rules about this sort of thing. No violence, unless it’s the last resort. I don’t punch first.” I make a disbelieving noise. “What?”
“Tell that to the Shaper chick you shot. Whatsername—Crystalis.”
Sherman stiffens. “Crystalis deserved it.”
Why? I want to ask. But that strange vulnerability shimmers in her long-lashed eyes. I can’t poke this crack in her tough act. Not when I’m scared it might break her.
It’s strange, standing this close. I notice all those little details: the ones that escape me usually, because I’m busy grumbling to myself about her supermodel bone structure. The tiny mole under her left eye. The chip in one of her canines. Her lips are lined with a thousand fine, dry creases. This urge to lick them smooth zaps through me, dizzying, electric. I have to clench every muscle in my body to hold myself back.
Only … wait, what?
I want to kiss her?
Kiss Sherman?
Sherman and Riley, sitting in a tree? K-I-S-S-I-N-G?
No way. It’s one thing appreciating all that glorious bicepiness and cheekbonage. But why would I want to send my tongue on a spelunking expedition in search of her tonsils? Her: the girl at the heart of the henchmen’s revolt, who wants me to keep her Superpowered secret, who just shoved me up against a window, an action that evidently rattled any remaining sense right out of my brain? Why would I want to hook my fingers in her belt loops, tug her in until her nose bumps mine? Until I go cross-eyed as I study her, memorizing every angle of her smooth brown face? Until she murmurs my name (Jones), a hot husk of air, and I chase it back into her mouth …
“Jones?”
I jump. “Huh? Wha—what?”
Sherman tugs her bottom lip with her teeth. It looks so very soft. “Did—did I hurt you?”
“No! No.”
Not in any physical way. On the inside, though, I’m reeling. It took so long for me to see Jav like this. My feelings crystallized over years, slow as a stalactite, tiny granules sticking together to form something far greater. Sherman, though—she sawed through another rock formation as I walked beneath and dropped the whole thing on my head.
I’m totally blushing. Fuck.
“I’m fine. Honest. And I’m sorry if I made you doubt me, okay? This whole strike thing is just … a lot.”
“No. You don’t have to apologize.” Sherman averts her gaze to our matching black holographic combat boots. “This is on me. I…” A lengthy pause, her jaw working silent as she searches for words. They all arrive in a rush: “Look, Jones. Not so long ago, an ex-girlfriend let me down big-time, in a big way.”
Whoa, record scratch. “You … Ahem. Had a girlfriend? We talking gal pals, or…?”
Sherman shrugs like it’s no big deal. Maybe to her, it isn’t. “I’m bisexual.”
Oh my God.
“Me … me lesbian?” Did I say that in baby talk or Tarzan talk? Shit.
“Good for you. Point is, trust doesn’t come easy when you’ve been burned before. I need folks I can rely on. Friends who’ve got my back.”
Her grave eyes study me at point-blank range. I’m naked under that gaze. Not a bad, dreaming-I’m-in-the-middle-of-homeroom naked. The other sort.
“Are you with me?” Sherman asks, while the heat inside me dips lower, softer, caressing me from the inside. “Do you have my back?”
I remember how to talk—sort of. “I, uh, yeah. Yeah, I do.”
It might be a lie. Tomorrow, I might regret it. But, I think, as Sherman nods and steps to the side, reinstating the space between us, tomorrow is a long way away.