Hench (Hench, #1)

by Natalie Zina Walschots

Since one of my standard problem-solving staples has always been to throw alcohol at a situation until it improves, to thank the team for holding down the fort while I was off sowing the seeds of discontent and also welcome Tamara into the fold, I called a “team-building” session at the Hole.

“My name is a joke that stuck, and all I’ve earned from two encounters with Supercollider is a permanent limp and an eye patch.” “Names all start as jokes or insults, before we own them. And you survived Supercollider twice. He’s a hell of an enemy to have.” “I will admit I am lucky.” “I refuse to let you dismiss my utter fucking symphony of an operation as luck.” “That’s not what I—” “Getting you out of there was a nightmare, but we did it. You do good work and we needed you here. That’s why you survived.” “I—thank you.” “Self-deprecation has splash damage.” “Why are you being so goddamn wise.” “Because you’re being impossible. As soon as you settle down, I can return to being a meathead again.”

“You’d think people would be much more afraid to hang out with heroes and kicks.” “Why’s that?” “Well, they have a much higher mortality rate. You date a hero? You’re their best friend? Their mom? The uncle who raised them? You’re getting kidnapped three times a week, easy.” I chuckled. “True.” “’Course it is. When’s the last time a villain’s fiancée was spirited away from their engagement party and tied to the front of a speeding train for ransom?” I actually barked out a small laugh at that. “They really should step up their game.” “You know why they can’t get to our loved ones?” Keller asked. “Because they’d never stoop to it?” I answered. “Because we don’t have any.”

“Does that make me stupid?” “Nah; it makes you a little bit evil, though.” “Flatterer.” “I’m serious.” “I’m petty and mean, maybe, but I don’t know if picking on heroes the way I do fully counts as evil.” Keller suddenly raised his hands into claws. Deepening his voice, he spoke in a caricature of Leviathan’s metallic rumble: “To seek vengeance and power instead of cowering when the world punishes you. That’s what they think evil is, do they not?”

“For what it’s worth, his kidnapping had nothing to do with me at all. I almost had a fucking aneurysm when the ransom video showed up.” “That was—” “The first I knew of it, yeah. I hate it when he doesn’t tell me things.” She relaxed a tiny bit. “Collider was like that.” I disliked the comparison. “Usually he does. But he’s not himself when Collider’s involved.” “They definitely care more about each other than they do about us.”

“You available?” “Always here, always at your service.” I rubbed my temples. “So, this might be stupid.” “It might be, but I definitely want to hear it, as that is certainly the phrase that’s launched a thousand schemes.”

“Do you hate him now?” I thought that might make her angry, but she took the question seriously. Her brow knit, and she thought about it. “I hate everything that made him. I don’t know if there’s enough of him to hate.”

“They’re never going to forgive you for this,” I said. She finished wrapping her hands and flexed her fingers. She made a tiny force field blossom between her hands and then popped it, a move like cracking her knuckles. She looked at me. “It’s not so bad, really.” She grinned at me and suddenly I could feel my face ache from the width of my smile. “I wasn’t planning to forgive them either.”

We were counting on there being some collateral damage from the confrontation between Quantum and Supercollider to help us tear the place apart and make it easier for us to walk in. “If you happened to knock him through a wall or two while protecting us,” I said cheerfully, “that would be remarkably helpful.” “Blast a hole or four that we can widen,” Keller added over the comm. Quantum nodded. “I think I can do that. He’s always been terrible at avoiding property damage.” “Show her the fucking PowerPoints, Auditor,” Keller grumbled.

Supercollider had a great deal in common with a diamond: aesthetically tacky; value artificially ascribed by corporate greed; cultural significance vastly overinflated; and incredibly hard to damage.

I’M INCREDIBLY LUCKY. I know that’s a thing people say fairly often when giving speeches or talking about their lovely wife and kids or whatever, but I mean it differently. I’m lucky like a cockroach is lucky: irritatingly resilient, and if you see one there’s an army of them in the walls somewhere. I realize I’ve just called my friends, colleagues, and loved ones cockroaches, which gives you an idea of how good I am at feelings, but what I am trying to get at is that I am surrounded by an entire community of hilarious geniuses without whom I would not have been able to accomplish a damn thing.