“W-WINDWALKER?” THE GUARD stumbles over the code name. Guess he’s not used to meeting good guys.
“The one, the only.” Cooper’s in full hero regalia: brilliant white suit, navy accents, gold star on the chest. His mask hugs the bridge of his nose.
Oddly, he looks less impressive than he did that day at Artie’s. Sure, his spandex outlines each bulge, from biceps to crotch. His Colgate grin could induce snow blindness, and his jaw is as chiseled as if Michelangelo himself hacked at him with carpentry tools. But everything is too exaggerated. He’s a cartoon. A caricature. Like, I’m supposed to respect the bodybuilder in the painfully constrictive tights? That’s hilarious.
Sherman asks what we’re all thinking before I can do something suicidal, like say any of this out loud. “What’s he doing here?”
“Whatever he wants,” says Cooper with a smarmy grin. “Perk of being a hero.” He eyes her up and down. “You look familiar. Have we met?”
Sherman sucks a sharp breath. “No.”
“I’m sure of it! Don’t be shy; always happy to meet a fan. Was it an after-party? Autograph signing?”
I cut in before Sherman can crunch so tightly into herself that she disappears. “Like the one you tried to give me?”
Cooper’s eyes widen. “Oh, no way!” He all but guffaws. “Beanburger girl?”
Of course he never learned my name. I cross my arms. “Glad I left an impression.”
“Sure did! We got off on the wrong foot, huh? But hey, don’t sweat it.” He beams at me, real friendly. “Water under the bridge.”
Hell no. He doesn’t get to pretend that a Normie one-upping on a Super meant nothing.
Jav steps forward. “Remember me, too?”
That knocks the smile off his face. Cooper looks nervous. Then he remembers she’s a Normie, and it’s her word against his. “Just a joke, yeah? Don’t make a big deal of it.”
The guard interjects: “Mr. Windwalker, please. I have to ask—why are you here?”
“To pay my nemesis a visit, of course.” Cooper looks us over: Jav fuming, Sherman withdrawn, me fervently wishing for a potato peeler. And, whether out of a misguided sense of altruism or the hope he can smooth things over, he turns back to the guard, leaning one elbow on the edge of his desk, gigawatt grin brighter than the sun. “I’ll escort these girls, stop them getting into trouble. No need for you to worry.”
The guard weighs it up. His gaze roves across our trio, then darts back to Cooper. I see the moment he relents, the realization of it’s not worth it that crawls across his face. Maybe he’s running his own three rules through his head.
“All right,” he says, fiddling with his radio. “Go on in. You got twenty minutes.”
“Perfect.” Cooper waves us ahead. “Ladies first.”
The Supervillain Detention Center is an underground mole run of tunnels beneath the guard towers. I don’t know what to expect inside. They don’t show this part of the prison on TV, in a bid to reduce the constant breakouts. Cooper plays tour guide, informing us that the walls are made of a rare metal I can’t pronounce, proven to deflect Super antics.
The wire cell fronts are made from the same material (henceforth named whatever-the-fuckium). The electronics are similarly coated, so no Surger can siphon power on the sly. Summoners, being the rarest and most dangerous of the three main categories into which Supers are divided, have their own subsection, located beyond the circular door at the far end of the corridor.
Sherman walks behind me. The impact of her feet is muffled, as if she’s wading through snow. Me, her, and Jav flounder along in whatever-the-fuckium-lined boiler suits, looking like old-timey divers and moving about as nimbly. Should our shells have any flaws, a malignant A-class Shaper could freeze our blood within our veins, rupture every muscle that binds us together. A Surger of similar caliber could mess with the signals in our brains, drain us like a battery.
That’s the shit us Normies go up against every day of our lives. Strange, how the protective suits put that into perspective.
Cooper Hanson leads the way, spring in his step, whistle on his lips. No boiler suit necessary. He’s an A-class Summoner, more than capable of self-defense. If he put his mind to it, he could tear the air from our lungs.
I’m glad he restrained himself to yelling, back when I introduced that sack of soggy vegan burgers to his face. Not thankful, because that implies I owe him. Just … glad.
Jav walks closest to Cooper, somehow resisting the urge to kick him in his shapely bubble butt. She studies the cages we pass. Five men and two women slouch inside, perfect bodies draped with loose orange scrubs. They smirk at us, like they know something we don’t.
I hope so. We’re counting on it.
“Why help us?” Jav asks Cooper.
He presses his palm to a space-agey access panel beside the circular door. It scans him with a radioactive-blue light. “I overheard your conversation with that guard.”
“So … what?” She narrows her eyes. “You decided to play Good Samaritan?”
He glances at us. No more cheesy grins. As for what replaces them—well. I don’t like that at all. If a hero’s nervous, what hope do the rest of us have?
“Not exactly,” he says.
The door buzzes open. Cooper ushers us into the Summoner section of the jail. In here, the defenses get a little more inventive. You can’t keep a Wind-Type Summoner from breathing, or a Water-Type Summoner from drinking, but you can keep them immobile. Ish.
Elemental powers are harnessed through momentum. Exorbitant gesticulation and aerial high kicks indicate a trajectory along which atoms do really weird shit (at least, that’s what they taught us during our Super Science module in seventh grade). The Ferocious Flamer won’t be frolicking around Sunnylake any time soon. He floats before us, suspended in a contraption that reminds me of the gyroscopes in steampunk art. Two metal gimbals rotate inside a larger ring, while he hovers, perfectly inert, strapped to the disc at the center. Sturdy tubes of whatever-the-fuckium encase his arms to the elbow and both of his legs to the knee. They hold him in a spread eagle that’d be obscene if they’d let him keep that holographic unitard.
But the Flamer isn’t here to stay. Judging by his smirk, he knows it. “If it isn’t the Windwalker, my nemesis! Come to gloat?”
Cooper’s scowl slashes his model-like features. “Not today.”
“That’s right; you did your fair share of that when they caught me.” The Flamer’s gaze treks to us. He must’ve been wearing contacts at the observatory; his actual eyes are dark, not piercing blue. His orange hair lacks its usual spikes—guess they won’t let him near flammable hairspray. Brown tinges the roots, as if mud is extinguishing the flame. “What brings you and your groupies to my humble abode?”
His cell is halved. We stand on a small viewing platform, linked to the hallway behind, while he floats in his fancy bondage gear beyond yet another metal grill. This pod is significantly cooler than the rest of the prison—another effort to reduce the fire risk—but my boiler suit still gums to my sweaty back.
This man killed Amelia. The hate I feel for him is acid, eating through my stomach lining.
“I’m here for information,” says Cooper.
The Flamer cracks his neck from side to side: the most motion he’s permitted. “Ask away. The therapist did say I should liven up my daily routine.”
Cooper’s jaw is a diamond-cut wedge. “What’s Project Zero?”
Me, Jav, and Sherman lock up.
“Uh,” says the Flamer. “What?”
I emulate: “What? How do you know about Project Zero?”
Cooper doesn’t look at me. “I could ask the same of you. But I’m not. I’m asking him.”
“And I’m asking you!”
Cooper hooks his fingers through the grill, still glowering at the Flamer. “I’ve been investigating this for a while. No idea what you three have to do with it, but if you came to talk to him, you must be as in the know as I am.”
Like hell do I trust this. I tug the sleeve of Sherman’s boiler suit. “Let’s go. We don’t need his help.”
Jav disagrees. “We think Project Zero has something to do with the new buildings going up across Bridgebrook.” I kick the back of her leg. “Ow! What? Enemy of my enemy.”
Cooper is the enemy. I fume at her as Cooper replies: “Sorry to disappoint. Project Zero involves a cover-up of the rising pollution levels in Clearwater River.”
Like in Amelia’s research. Sherman and I exchange eyebrow scrunches, through the grill-threaded glass of our suit visors. “Where’d you get that from?” she asks.
“You guys wouldn’t know—it wasn’t reported by the press.” Cooper points at the Flamer. “When he attacked the Andoridge observatory, he went for one of the scientists. A limnologist. Her name was…”
“Amelia Lopez,” I breathe. “How—how did you know that?”
His glare snaps to me. “How did you know that?”
“Yeah,” echoes Jav. “How did you know that, Riley?”
“Uh … Word on the street?” Their expressions call bull. I scowl. “I’m not the one we’re supposed to be ganging up on. The Flamer’s turning us against each other!”
“Hardly,” says the Flamer. “I’ve barely spoken. You’re doing a fine job all by yourselves.”
Cooper eyes me suspiciously, but I wear my Normieness like a pudgy shield. I’m no threat to him. He can tell me anything—and, judging by how quickly the words spill from him, he’s been dying to talk about this for some time.
“Brightspark’s teaching me to fly the Super Squad jet,” he says, all in a rush. “I was in the copilot’s seat, guiding us up over Andoridge, when I saw the Flamer and a henchman chasing a young woman.” He shudders. “It happened soon after. Just thinking about it … God. I barely slept for a week.”
Join the club. “Then what?” I ask.
“All these papers were blowing about, so we got the sidekicks to gather them. Brightspark said the woman must’ve been one of the Flamer’s exes—”
The Flamer scoffs. We ignore him.
“—and he took the papers into evidence. Like I said, I wasn’t sleeping, so I started looking into Amelia Lopez instead. Her life, her research…” He smacks the cage. “Nothing to do with our villain friend. She shut down her last project at Sunnylake University three months ago. All official lab results destroyed. But some of those papers had test notes on them, dated back to then. Whatever made her abandon the project, she picked it up again.” His brows lower. “And the Flamer killed her for it.”
Of course he has better contacts than us. Of course he has better sources, concrete proof. He’s a Super. Full-on protagonist material. I’m just the NPC in his story. A quirky footnote, a punch line—that bitch who slapped me with a trash bag.
My fists tremble at my sides. Jav would tell me to cool it, since we all want the same thing—like how she can overlook his wandering hands in exchange for information. Ever the opportunist. But I’m not like her. I can’t forgive and forget just because it’s convenient. I don’t like Cooper, and I definitely don’t like that he’s sticking his fingers in Amelia’s secrets.
We don’t need a hero to swan in and take over. Us Normies—and Sherman—got it covered.
“Look,” I say, squaring up to Cooper. “Your theory doesn’t explain what’s happening in Bridgebrook.”
“Who cares what’s happening in Bridgebrook?”
“Uh,” says Jav, “the people who live there?”
The Flamer chuckles before Cooper can respond. “Look at you. All chasing threads. Can’t stand back far enough to see the web.”
“So cryptic,” I snap. “So mysterious. How long did it take you to think of that metaphor?”
Cooper shakes the mesh wall. “And do you care to explain it?”
The Flamer treats us to a beatific smile. “Pass.”
I scowl at Cooper. “Can’t you beat the answer out of him? That’s what you heroes do, right? At least then you’d be good for something.”
“Um.” Jav holds up a hand. “Maybe let’s not violate any constitutional human rights…”
Cooper at least contemplates my proposal. “Tempting, but I have my career to think about. Still, let’s not take it off the table.”
“You could always look in the other direction while I beat the answer out of him,” I suggest, punching my opposite palm.
Jav sighs through her nose. “No one beats answers out of anybody.”
“You hate it when I have fun.”
“I must say,” says the Flamer, with another crack of his neck, “this is quite amusing. I haven’t had so much entertainment since I burned Miss Lopez.”
My mouth snaps shut. Jav’s boiler suit squeaks as she crosses her arms. “You could repay us by telling us what we want to know,” she says. “What’s Project Zero? Were you the villain behind it?”
“I see no reason to acquiesce to the demands of Normies.” Another neck crack; a vicious smirk. “In case you have forgotten, I am the Ferocious Flamer.”
Sherman grimaces. “Did you seriously pick that name?”
His shoulders sink. “… No. Wildfire was already taken.”
“Tell me about it,” mumbles Cooper. “I wanted to be Typhoon.”
Jav examines the Flamer over the prow of her nose. “You couldn’t even choose your own code name? Damn.”
The Flamer’s brows lower. “Mind your words, Normie.”
“Right—sorry. I should be thanking you, since you just answered my second question.” Jav’s smile twists into a smirk. “Whoever’s actually behind this whole Project Zero thing, I bet they got to name themselves. Face it, Flamer. You ain’t running this show. Which makes you—what? A sidekick?”
“More like a henchman,” I say. I see what Jav’s doing.
Steam trickles from his ears. “I am not…!”
“Maybe antagonizing him isn’t the best idea?” says Cooper, but none of us are listening. Hothead with a hot temper. The Flamer really does fit the villainous stereotype.
“You’re a distraction,” I say, stepping in line with Jav. A glint catches my eye. Her phone, half-obscured by her elbow. Is she filming? The tiny white camera light is hard to see, surrounded as we are by metallic glare. “A fall guy. You kill Dr. Lopez, get yourself arrested for some bullshit with a giant laser. Then there’s a villain behind bars, so no Super bothers to look deeper.”
Cooper clears his throat. I ignore him. Jav’s onto something here: Whether or not Project Zero involves her theories on gentrification, the Flamer isn’t the man behind it.
“Doesn’t that make you mad?” I ask, trying to get a lock on the Flamer’s eyes through the pinholes in the whatever-the-fuckium mesh between us. “Knowing someone else is getting away with all this, while you rot in a cell?”
The Flamer sneers. He blows a stray strand of hair from his forehead but says a grand total of fuck all.
“He won’t be here long,” says Sherman. “They never are.”
“And I bet there’s a big payout waiting.” Jav studies him, nostrils flared. Breath steams and dies on the wire-threaded visor of her suit. “So, what happens if you fail? What happens if we take all that research Amelia was trying to share with the world and blast it all over the socials? If money’s the carrot, what’s the stick?”
The Flamer pales. “You can’t do that.”
“I would say ‘watch me,’ but you’re in a jail cell with no media access.” Jav pats the grill of his cage. “You’ll just have to wait and see how your friends at the VC react. Unless you give us something we can use to shut Project Zero down.”
“Damn.” Cooper sounds impressed. “You girls are good at this.”
“Quiet, please,” says Jav sweetly. “I’m working.” She returns her glare to the Flamer. “Well?”
For the first time, the Flamer looks at us with no disdain. His brown eyes widen, pleading. We might be Normies, we might be beneath him, but in this moment, we’re united against something bigger. Something worse.
“I … I can’t.”
Jav turns away. “Riley, wanna send pics of those papers you got? I can start hyping this online tonight…”
“No!” His voice drops to an urgent husk. “You don’t understand. This thing’s too big, don’t you see? Connected. What you said about the river, Bridgebrook, everything … It’s all connected.”
I wish I could risk opening my suit so I could take a gulp of unfiltered air. Connected. The word shatters in my head, breaking along each harsh consonant. Con-nec-ted. The river, the new condos … But how? Why?
Connect the dots. Join the lines. Take a step back, put all these disparate fragments of a story into perspective, and what do you get…?
My heart beats double time. You get a whole lot of trouble.
I spin to Jav and Sherman. “Cooper—what sort of pollution are we talking? In Clearwater River?”
His nose puckers. “Untreated sewage, courtesy of the municipal works.”
“Shit Creek? Gross. Look at it like this. Some property development firm—”
“Which one?” Sherman jumps in.
“Let’s go with Blair Homes. Anyway, they’ve struck a deal with the VC.”
Jav takes over the tale. “So, villains smash up uninsured properties in Bridgebrook, leaving prospective brownfield sites available for upscale building projects.”
“All those big words! What she just said!” I grin at Sherman, even at Cooper. “That’s enough of a conspiracy, but bear with. They’ve got a nice gig going on, until something goes wrong up Shit Creek.”
“Stormwater,” suggests Jav. “In heavy rainfall, the drains overflow. The city’s crap winds up in the river.”
Cooper frowns. “It’s summer. It hasn’t rained properly for months.”
I wave a hand. “Amelia obviously picked up on something—you wanna mansplain this to the dead limno-whatever?”
“Limnologist,” says Jav.
“Whatever. Point is, a river full of crap is bad for business! Won’t appeal to all those bougie hipster types looking to rent a new condo in Bridgebrook.” Possibly one that blossoms from the rubble of 26 Sloan Street. I suppress a shudder at the thought. “So they try to cover it up, right? Until they can sell all the houses. That’s why Amelia’s research got shut down! She must’ve figured out the rest of the story.” I point at the Flamer. “That’s where he came in.”
“Makes sense,” says Jav, endeavoring to stroke her chin through her visor. “Any of that sound familiar, Flamer?”
The Flamer glares at the floor. “Congratulations. Aren’t you clever.”
The last thing I feel for him is sympathy. The VC might hold his leash, but he’s the one who sent that fireball after Amelia. He’s the one who watched her burn.
Still, his confirmation is worth his weight in whatever-the-fuckium. This is it: a solid theory, and a villain’s testimony on top. Do those count in court? Hell if I know—but this should be enough evidence for us to make Project Zero someone else’s problem.
Preferably not someone like Cooper. He plucks distractedly at the wires of the Flamer’s cage. “I don’t know. Something about this doesn’t add up…”
“Did you miss the last few minutes? Because that was me, adding. With a calculator, ’cause I’m bad at math.” I nod to Jav and Sherman, triumphant. “We got what we came for. Let’s split.”
Cooper doesn’t get to cross the finish line first. Just for once, the Normies save the day.
Out we march, leaving Cooper and the Flamer to their macho glare-off. We have to shuck our boiler suits before we exit the Supervillain Detention Center, under the supervision of a gorgeous woman less prone to smiling than Sherman. The guards in this division are all Supers—those who didn’t pass the initiation trials or were deemed to be of the wrong temperament for sidekicking. They keep us under careful observation as we pack our suits into their lockers, as if we might smuggle a villain out under our clothes. I’m just glad we aren’t told to bend over and cough.
You’d think sussing out the motives behind Project Zero would be something to celebrate, but Jav lapses into a silence thicker than the humid soup outside. She doesn’t say a word as we sign out at the main desk, flies bopping lethargically off the reception building’s dusty windowpane.
“So,” I say as we saunter along the edge of the yard. I try for jovial, falling a few thousand miles short. “Windwalker’s still a jerk.”
Jav won’t look at me. “I’m not thick, Riles.”
“Please. Of the many insults I can think up for you, thick is the least accurate.”
Jav glares. “You still seem to think it. You couldn’t have known about Amelia unless you were at the observatory. And the only people there were scientists, heroes, villains, and henchmen.”
Shit. She knows.
I got asthma attacks on the regular as a kid—perks of living with a chain smoker. It eased off after I moved in with Hernando, but I never forgot this sense of suffocation, the tightness in my chest, as if ashy hands reached in and gave each of my lungs a squeeze. “You forgot sidekicks.”
One look at her face tells me she’s not buying it. I sigh.
“Look, I meant to tell you, okay? It just got lost under coming out, and Lyss’s birthday, and Project Zero, and everything else that’s gone wrong this summer, and…”
“Bullshit,” Jav decrees. “You didn’t want to tell me. Because you knew I’d tell you what I’m telling you now, which is that you’re making a terrible choice.” She waves back at the prison: a vast white building, wings branching toward us like ribs from a giant’s spine. “I don’t wanna visit you here. Hernando and Lyssa don’t, either.”
“Jav…”
“The hell you thinking? After everything Hernando did for you? How could you throw that away?” She shakes her head, braids slapping her shoulders. “You and me, we don’t got dads, Riley. But you found one anyway. I don’t get it. I don’t know how you could ever let him down!”
She doesn’t know shit. “Not like I have a choice! You know I’m saving for therapy—”
“And I’m sure watching people die really helps. Don’t give me no excuses. This is self-destructive and dangerous and not helping in the slightest. The hell you trying to prove?”
I jolt back. Jaw clamped. Wishing I had an answer.
“Hold up.” Sherman flushes: a rose tint that clings to her bronze cheekbones and the tips of her ears. Her curls droop over her forehead, limp from being stuffed beneath the boiler suit. “We’re trying to change shit here.”
“We? Great. Of course you’re a henchman, too.” Jav’s voice tucks low as the guard buzzes us out, then surges up like white water. “Sunnylake doesn’t need henching to be more accessible! We need it to stop. All of it. No more henchmen, no more villains. No more Normies getting hurt!”
“You’re not listening,” I try, but Jav cuts me off.
“No, you’re not listening. We been friends long enough for me to tell you when you’re screwing up your life.”
I knew she wouldn’t get it. I knew she wouldn’t even try to understand. “Oh yeah? That’s what I’m doing, is it?”
“Damn right,” Jav snaps. “Along with the lives of so many more people. There is always a choice, Riley. And you chose the summer vacation job where you go around blowing up the houses of people like us, so the VC’s friends can move in.”
That’s not fair. It’s not, it’s not. “I’m trying to stop Project Zero, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Because that absolves you from helping the villains—helping companies like Blair Homes?” Jav’s glare could cut steel. “Oh, right. I forgot. Henchmen have zero responsibility for all the crap the VC pull in Sunnylake. They’re just following orders.”
“Jav…”
“Orders can be misinterpreted.” Sherman crosses her arms, shoulders squared off and boxy. “We do what we can.”
“While enabling the villains to cause more widespread destruction! Even if you’re just doing their filing and—and vacuuming their lairs or whatever!”
Ouch. Jav doesn’t know what an accurate summation of our jobs that is.
“That’s the point of your protest, isn’t it?” Jav continues. “That the city needs henchmen? But it doesn’t. Not really. You’re just one part of a broken system, and you might think you’re helping, but you’re just making everything worse.”
“Yeah,” I snap as we near the gates. “Says the girl who wants to go into government.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it? Is it really? How come you get to dream about changing things, but I don’t?” My anger usually burns fast and loud, sparks and gasoline. This is different. Frigid crystal veins branch through my body. I lean into Jav, our faces close enough to make my heart kick. “Because you’re smarter than me? Better than me? Because you’re going to Harvard?”
“Riley…” Jav’s chin softens. Her eyes don’t. “That’s not what I—”
“Or is it because you’re going to turn out just like everyone else when they reach the top?” I’m right up in her face now. A fleck of my spit glints back at me from her cheek. I drop my voice, real low, like it’s just the two of us. “Give it another few years, Jav. Then you can start a Project Zero of your own.”
It’s the most cutting thing I can think to say to her. And it gouges deep. I watch those words open Jav, the scalpel slicing down her sternum and across her chest like she’s laid out on an autopsy slab. I watch the hurt crack across her face like she’s been slapped. And I feel really, really fucking powerful.
For all of a second.
Then comes the guilt. A whole landslide’s worth, crushing me beneath. Making me wish I could catch every word I just said out of the air and stuff them back into my mouth.
“Yikes,” mutters Sherman. Jav—she says nothing at all.
My best friend turns and walks away from me, out through the prison gates. She doesn’t look back.