Dreadnought (Nemesis, #1)

by April Daniels

“What’s this?” “A suppository.” “No.” “Shove that up your butt.” “No.” “It’s for science.” “No.” “Please?” “You are going to buy me pizza.” “Deal.” “A lot of pizza.”

“I guess I just thought that I was finally a real girl.” “Hey! None of that!” She takes me by the shoulders. “You think it’s a uterus that makes a woman? Bullshit. You feel like you’re a girl, you live it, it’s part of you? Then you’re a girl. That’s the end of it, no quibbling. You’re as real a girl as anyone.

They’ll find some way to make you unhappy with your body sooner or later,

All of humanity is pinpricks of light beneath me. The silence up here is perfect. I can see forever. And I see. I see a world that is terrified of me. Terrified of someone who would reject manhood. Terrified of a girl who knows who she is and what she’s capable of. They are small, and they are weak, and they will not hurt me ever again. My name is Danielle Tozer. I am a girl. No one is strong enough to take that from me anymore.

What started as something that was almost an affirmation (everyone is noticing I’m a girl!) has now become tedious (and now they won’t get over it!).

“How did it happen?” “Born with it. Hell, everyone on my dad’s side of the family has it. Anyone who traces a direct line back to grandpa gets it.” “And where did he get it?” “Uncle Sam. Back during World War II, the government got to playing around with exotic chemistry. They were trying to create something that could call out Hitler’s Übermenschen. Uh, this was before Dreadnought showed up, obviously. Once they whipped up a batch of this super serum, they needed someone to try it out on, so they did whatever white men do when they have a dangerous, unpleasant job that wants doing—they looked around for some brown people and volunteered them. That was Granddad. They told him it was a new kind of vaccine. The serum worked, and after the war when he had kids we found out it was heritable, too.”

“White girls get all the cool toys.” “Yes, that’s why they gave this to me. Because I’m white.” Calamity drops her eyebrows at me and I feel silly already. “Are you seriously whining about a little bit of teasing?” “No,” I mutter. “Good. Because that’d be fucking petty, and I’d hate to have to stop liking you.”

I’m sorry. I was an ass.” “Plenty of bridges in this town, I’m sure we can let some water pass under one of them,” says Sarah, with hints of Calamity.

“How are you doing?” I ask. Her eyes get wet and she screws her mouth shut. I go to hug her, and she shifts away from me. So instead, I take her hand and I squeeze it, and after a moment she squeezes back. We stay like that for a long time. “I lost my arm, Danny,” says Sarah. Her voice shakes. “What am I going to do without my arm?” “Keep saving the world, I imagine.”