“Girlie? Hey, you here with me?”

Meathead nudges me a little, sitting across from me. His call shocks me out of my stupor. I didn't even notice us leaving the training facility or making it back to the compound. I’ve been floating in and out of consciousness since… Since it happened. Even the parts where I feel lucid don't feel real. It's like there's a haze around everything, vaseline in my reality.  

I lean over towards him, loopily nodding. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I’m sorry.” I reach down to my makeshift pouch, and pull out the medical device, placing it on the table between us. “I got my thing. Mission successful, right? I’m sure you did your whole computer thing, right? Yeah?” 

He fidgets, seeming to wrestle with something. “I did it, yeah. Look, girlie. I’m sorry, I… I never should have left you alone like that. You’re green, needed help, and I–” 

“Hey, c’mon.” I interrupt him, give him a loopy smile. “You clearly didn’t have to worry about me. I-I mean. Clearly I’m stronger than you thought, huh? I can handle myself out there.”

He sighs pretty dramatically. “That’s not what I mean. You never should have been there in the first place, no matter how ‘safe’ our hits were. We were lucky to get low level capes so far, but there was always a chance a heavy hitter like Zero could have showed up.”

“Well, not anymore, right?” I think I laugh, but Meathead doesn’t laugh with me. I lean over a little, gripping my arm across from me. “I bet they’re going crazy over there. That was the number one at CCHIP. Who the hell else are they gonna throw at us now, right? I wish I could see what their reaction is…” We sit in silence, me clicking my nails together being the only sound I can hear. Now that I say that I can’t get the thought out of my head. The cameras, the drones. Filming me, as I… I look back up at Meathead. “The news has to be covering this, right? Those drones were all over us.” 

I spring up and grab my phone from where I stashed it before leaving, pulling up a local news site on the browser. Sure enough, they had a live feed of the station right on the homepage, and there was my picture up in the corner behind the anchor. 

Meathead gets up and follows me as I pace. “Hey,” he says, “maybe you shouldn’t be looking at that stuff right now.” He places his hand on my shoulder lightly, trying to steer me back to the couch. I look up at him, standing over me, face near mine, like… “C’mon, we should–” 

“Don’t touch me!” I move to brush his hand away from me, but stop myself before I can reach his wrist, jerking my hand back like it’s a hot iron. Instead I shrug my way back as he backs up on his own, both hands up. “Sorry. Sorry, I… I’m ok, please. Let me see, I want to see.” 

I sit down again, unmuting the livestream, scrolling through the articles on the page. “– senseless killing. Moments ago CCHIP chief Maroni gave a statement on the emergence of this new villain, and the tragic loss she’s perpetrated.” 

The camera cut to a portly man standing at a podium as I scrolled down the article, trying to read ahead of the broadcast. He looked stern, a million flashes of light going on in front of him from the reporters. “This is a tragic day for all of us. Something we never thought would happen has, and we have lost one of our finest.” A small jump cut interrupts him, fading into later in the speech. “The suspect in question has been officially rated code red; extreme caution required. Please, if you see her or any of her associates, flee immediately and take shelter. Her mutagenic powers rival only her associate Basilisk’s death touch, and fatality cannot be ruled out. If you have any information about the suspect, current codename–”

“Biotwister!?” I feel bile rising into my throat. “They can’t call me that! That’s the worst name I think I’ve ever heard!” I look up to Meathead, still standing where I left him. “You agree, right? I… That’s nothing like who I am! I can’t, can’t be called that. It was the first time I ever…” 

He steps over to me, seeming to reach down to touch me again, but thinks better of it and just sits across from me again. That’s probably a smart decision, for his own good. 

“Maybe it’ll grow on you,” he started. “Mine didn’t fit either, but I decided to own it. Maybe all you need is…” He stops himself when I stare up at him. I wonder if he can see the hurt in my eyes. “Or, maybe you don’t. It’s up to you, Girlie. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying about you.”

Instead of relaxing, I just shrug and turn back to the screen in my lap. I curl in on myself, glaring down at my phone. I think it matters. And it’s not just CCHIP. What else are people saying? Real people. I navigate away from the news to the cape fanboy site I monitor for my memorabilia flips. I know they’re talking about me there, but I haven’t been brave enough to check my own thread out before.

Sure enough, my thread was buzzing with, uh, interesting conversation. One guy said that my new… The thing they want to call me was ‘the sickest shit he ever heard’. Someone else responded with a very rude name and said she thought it sounded like a bad scifi channel film. One dude was very angry about my new outfit being ‘too masculine’ and how my old disguise was ‘way cuter’, then whined about female capes not being allowed to be sexy anymore. 

And, of course, there were the people terrified of me, of what I could do to them and to the city. And the people calling them pussies for getting scared. One particular guy getting his hackles up and talking about how he wishes he could take revenge himself. Another agreeing with him and adding a very detailed fantasy about how he would put me in my place that I skipped over very quickly. He’s almost certainly getting banned for sharing his sex roleplay in public, again. 

One person was all over the thread getting into arguments left and right, mad that people were being as glib as they always were. Saying she didn’t feel safe in the city anymore when someone as experienced, as universally respected as Zero could be wiped out in a second. That she has children that she’s scared for every day. That nothing is keeping her safe from the monsters of the city if they can’t even keep themselves safe…

“I’m… I’m not a monster…” I whisper it to myself, pulling my knees up to my face, scrolling through the thread almost absentmindedly. I would never hurt this lady’s kids! I don’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want any of this! All I wanted to do was keep getting by with a few petty crimes, and spending what time I could with the people that actually liked me. Why did I ever step in that fight? I fucked up, and now I’m damned just like–

The door to the room opens harshly, Basilisk looming on the other side of it. Speak of the devil. He quickly makes his way in between me and Meathead, glaring down at me. “Turn that thing off,” he says, motioning to my phone.

I quickly mute it and throw it onto the seat next to me. “Sorry sir. I was just trying to see–” 

“You. Out.” He interrupts me, swiveling towards Meathead.  

He puffs his chest out at the boss, ineffectively. “Lay off her, Doc. Can’t you see she’s gone through a lot today?” 

Basilisk growls back at him. “Give her her privacy. Out!”

He looks like he wants to argue more, before looking over to me. I appreciate the sentiment. I nod my head yeah at him, and he gives me one nod back before storming out of the room, slamming the door behind him. 

Basilisk walks over to me, staring me down beneath his nose again. “Show me.” 

I sit up straight, and scramble to pick up the medical contraption I swiped. “I have it right here, sir! Just tell me where to put it and I can fix back up to whatever you need, and–” 

“No, kid.” He shakes his head softly. “That can wait for later. Show me what he did to you.”

Oh. I sheepishly put the device back on to the table, then sit back down in my seat, fidgeting with my nails again. “What happened to ‘we keep our masks on at all times’?” 

He smiles at me, then pulls his own cowl off and walks over to scrounge for something, pulling out a set of tools and some first aid from a hobby hole. “We’ll exercise a little doctor patient confidentiality,” he calls out from over his shoulder. 

I don’t know why I’m shocked to see him take his helmet off, honestly. It’s not the first time I’ve seen his face; thinking back to the first time I woke up in this pigsty. I doubt he did it for his own benefit. I’m assuming it’s a little tit-for-tat, or a reminder that he’s already seen my face anyways. 

I sigh softly, reaching up for my hood, pulling it down and letting my hair fall free. Pull the soft mask down from my face, dried blood forcing me to peel it off my skin, little lines of fresh blood pulling out like a wet kiss. I shrug the cape and hood off my shoulders, zap my new bracers off my wrists, and finally unclasp my top so I can peel it down like a jumpsuit, leaving me exposed save for my sports bra. 

There’s no mirror for me to see the damage myself, but I can tell by the way Basilisk was frowning that it must have been plenty. I could still barely keep my one good eye open, still taste the metallic splits in my lips, feel all the deep bruises across my chest and arms. Still, I smirk at him. “You should see the other guy.” 

He gives me a genuine smile and a single laugh. Okay, that I know why I’m shocked to see. “You know kid, you remind me of someone.” 

“Been hearing that a lot lately. I guess I’m just a very familiar person.” 

He sits down in front of me to tend to my different injuries, silent as a mouse. I guess he’s not going to elaborate on that thought either. He takes a small knife and slices near my eye, letting it drain out. It stings, but not nearly the worst I’ve felt today. 

He pokes and prods me for a while in silence. Just when I think he’s not going to say anything, he finally pipes up. “My sister.” I tilt my head in confusion, but he knocks me softly on the side of the head. “Don’t move.” 

“Sorry Doc,” I say sheepishly. “I didn’t know you had a sister.” 

He dabs at my open wounds with some sterilizer on a cotton ball, then sets to start soft-stitching them shut. “Yeah, had. She died when I was a kid.”  

“Oh.” I’m not sure how exactly to follow up on that, so I just sit still and let him work on me. 

“Stephanie was a little spitfire. She cared about everyone, and spent almost all her time helping any cause she could believe in. Taught me everything I knew about opsec, how to feed a community, how to dress a wound, how to organize a protest. Went out of her way to step into matters she had no business being in, just because she saw something wrong happening.” 

“She was a Hero?” Then how did he…

Basilisk rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Lowercase H, kid. Nothing like the clown shit we get up to. Those pigs couldn’t stand real good like that. And she paid for it.” 

I stare up at him, ice in my veins. “You’re not suggesting…” 

“No,” he replies, teeth gritted for a second, “I’m not suggesting anything.” He puts his tools down, glowers off into the distance for a minute. “Stephanie found yet another cause at the end there; attempting to get a half condemned slum fixed up and expanded for low income housing. Almost convinced the city government to go along with it, before CCHIP stepped in and requested that land for themselves. Pointed vaguely at Russia and claimed that the exceptional times required exceptional training. Blink of an eye later and the families left were on the streets so that the capes could have a new little playground.” 

“She gets it in her head that asking nicely failed, so now she was going to demand it. Come demolition day, CCHIP and city planning find Stephanie and her gang sitting in, blocking their machines, and refusing to move until construction was called off. I think they wanted it brought to a vote first. All very noble, very civil. Lasted maybe a week before CCHIP russled up some bogus RICO case and rounded them up as domestic terrorists.”

“Not my sister though. She was saved for last, and when there were no witnesses around suddenly the capes claimed she pulled a gun on one of them. They blasted over twenty holes into her that day. She was dead before she hit the ground. Autopsy eventually came back that she was sitting down with both arms up at the time. Took them three days to ‘find’ a gun at the scene.” He seems to chew on his tongue for a minute. “My sister was a political hit. One protest leads to more, and can lead to the downfall of an organization. But take out a leader and you can kill a movement in its cradle.”

They… They couldn’t have. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. They’re heroes, they’ve saved so many people. They don’t just kill… They’re trying to kill Basilisk. They… They’re trying to kill me. But we’re dangerous! We’re threats. They wouldn’t just kill a civilian because it’s easy…

My mouth feels completely dry as I try to vocalize my confusion. “Wouldn’t… Why didn’t we hear about this? Wouldn’t this be a massive scandal?” 

Basilisk gives me an incredibly tired, disappointed look. “Kid, you’re smarter than that. It was the 80’s, in the middle of the Cold War. No one was going to give a shit about anti-government activists trying to stop a defense venture. My sister was a footnote in the headlines about our glorious superheroes training to defend our way of life. And once it was established, it just grew and grew, like a cancer.” 

I paused, mouth open. “You’re talking about Cape City, aren’t you.”

He snarled, and spit on the ground. “I’m not going to cry about what happened tonight. You should have leveled that place while you were at it. As far as I’m concerned, tonight was biblical justice.” 

Fuck that. I want to scream that I don’t want anything to do with that. I bite my tongue instead. Go softer. I’m already in this, after all. “Is that why we’re doing this? Revenge?”

He sighs, closes his eyes for a moment, pops his joints. “No. Stephanie would hate what we do. She inspired me to be better. She’s why I was a doctor, trying to help people. If I had my way, I would never think about CCHIP again.” He’s silent for a while, clicking the joints in his hands, just breathing. When he seems to have calmed down, he gets up, giving me his hand. “We’re done. Stand up.” 

I reach over to his hand, but stop short. My nails glint even in the dim light, sharp and evil. I’m shaking again. “It’s not safe.” 

We’re both silent for a long time, me just staring down at my hands, him down at me. “It isn’t easy, kid. Being afraid of touching anyone again. Knowing you have to hold back to even be safe to be around, not knowing if it’ll ever be enough.” He sits back down, pulling his chair even closer to me, sighing. Then, before I can stop him, he reaches out and grabs my hands, holding them up to my face. “We have blood on these hands. Can’t change that now. But we can hold onto that feeling. We can keep it from becoming trivial. We can stop things from getting worse.” 

"And that is why we're doing this, then? Do you think we've done a good job so far?"

He smirks down at me. "You sure you're not a Metzger, kid?"

Wow. He's really trusting me now. Maybe I should trust him too. I feel my knuckles itch, my bones crying to move away. “I don’t think I’m ok.”

“Just take a minute, kid.” He lets go of my hands, slapping lightly on my upper arm once. “You know, you remind me of someone else, too.”