Sovereign (Nemesis, #2)

by April Daniels

“Danny, when she and I were together, we never went out on a date. She doesn’t do dates.” Blood is thundering in my ears. My heart rate has gone from 60 to 100 in a second and a half. “So?” I hear myself ask. “So when she likes someone, she asks them to go caping with her.” “…oh.” About thirty seconds later, I’m hitting the sound barrier.

I am a towering moron. A champion of idiocy. They’re going to build a monument to the great clueless minds of history, and my face is going to be on it.

😂😂😂

“The cops are not your friends. Sooner or later, you’ll see.” “So we should give them reasons to come after us?” asks Charlie with a raised eyebrow. “That’s…um, insane? Yeah, that’s the word I want.” “Ain’t about givin’ them reasons,” mutters Calamity, who has suddenly displaced Sarah. “They ain’t never had trouble findin’ their own. Way I see it, you can set your mind to doin’ the right thing, or the legal thing. Sooner or later, you gotta choose.” “Right on,” says Kinetiq with vehemence. “What about rules of evidence?” asks Doc. “What about making sure the perps get convicted?” Kinetiq shrugs. “I don’t really care about that. The American prison system excels at a lot of things, but justice isn’t one of them.” “So when a serial killer gets out because you fouled up the crime scene, what then?” I ask. “If I was a Sherlock—” Cape slang. Go ahead and guess what it means. “—that might be an issue,” Kinetiq says. “But I’m not. I do crisis containment.” All eyes land on Calamity. She’s suddenly really interested in her food. After a moment, she mutters, “Sometimes you can only mail a wiretap recording to the detective in charge and hope for the best.”

“First step,” says Doc, “we should call up Detective Phạm and tell her that one of the superheroes she’s responsible for tried to kidnap and murder the other.” “What will that accomplish?” asks Kinetiq incredulously. “Phạm needs to know that Graywytch can’t be relied on.” Doc shrugs. “Also, it’s vindictive and bitchy and will ruin Myra’s day.” “I like that plan!” I say. “I am all for that plan!”

If you’re telling me a city contractor is a violent felon, then you’re gonna tell me that in person, in front of a camera, and you’re going to answer as many questions as I care to ask.” Cecilia slides a note across the table to me: no way. “These people kidnapped me once, Detective,” I say into the phone. “I’m staying in hiding until I can figure out a way to keep that from happening again.” “We can protect you—” she starts reflexively. “Against supervillains? Isn’t that what you guys pay me and Graywytch to do? If she’s the perp and I’m the victim, where does that leave the police room to come in? You can’t ask me to sign a suicide note.”

“Come over here.” He lights the candle and sets it in the bowl, and then backs quickly away. The flame turns crimson and begins leaking a thick, white smoke. “When I tell you to, I need you to very gently blow that smoke onto the book.” He’s still backing up. Still backing up. He’s outside of the room and ducking out of sight. “Codex, what’s this going to do?” I ask. His voice comes a ways down the hallway. “I’m almost sure it will disarm the trap.” “And if it doesn’t?” “It will trigger the trap.” “And that’s going to turn my blood to pus?” “That was more a colorful example than a prediction,” he calls. “It’s fine. I’m sure you’ll be—no, Calamity, don’t come any closer!” “Why do I have to do this? It’s your spell!” “Suck it up, Dreadnought,” shouts Calamity from far down the hall.

“You all right, partner?” “Hold on, something’s wrong with my balance.” “You need to evac?” “I’ll be fine once I find something expensive to vomit on.”

“I’ve got the book, we should leave,” says Codex as he slings his backpack into position. “You ain’t even had time to read it!” says Calamity. “It might be the wrong one.” “We’re fighting a world-class practitioner on her home turf,” he says, voice tight, “which is the most colorful suicide I can imagine. We. Need. To. Leave.”

“Dreadnought!” Calamity snaps the moderation out of her tone. “Upstairs. Now.” Calamity isn’t my commanding officer or anything so grandiose. But she does call the shots; we all agreed on that. Capes listen to their shot-caller. It’s how things work, no matter how much I wish I could ignore her right now. Goddamnit, Sarah.

“Look, kiddo—we’re superheroes. Violence is part of the job. But that doesn’t mean we execute people without a trial. We take them alive, every time. And if we can’t, we’d better have a damn good reason for why not. Better than anything you’ve had today.” “The other Dreadnoughts killed people.” “That’s true.” She nods. “But I guarantee you they never did it because they thought it’d make them feel better.”

There might come a day when you need to kill someone; I think we can both admit that. But when that happens, it’s forever. The other guy is dead, so he doesn’t care anymore—but you’ll have to carry that for the rest of your life. When you kill, it had better be in battle. It had better be someone who is still a threat. It had better be when you don’t have a choice, when seconds count and lives are on the line. Because I know you, Danielle, and you’re too good a person to be happy with a murder on your conscience.” There’s that word I’ve been avoiding. My voice comes out quieter than I’d like when I reply. “You said I had to take them down. That we couldn’t tolerate what they did.” “That’s right, I did. But I was thinking more along the lines of putting her in prison and then making funny faces at her from across the glass. You’ve been through hell; I get it, and if I had anyone else who could do your job, I’d use them instead and get you into therapy pronto. Not because I think you can’t hack it, by the way, but because even you have limits, and I don’t like seeing you get hurt. It’s clear to me now that you’re in way more trouble than I thought you were. If I had known you were in this kind of pain, I would have never sent you on that mission. But we don’t have a deep bench here, so I need you to be strong enough to keep a grip on yourself, at least until we’re out of this fight. Can you do that for me?”

With him in the hospital for the next few weeks, I can probably operate freely in orbit. And if Garrison finds someone else to send up against me, I’ll knock them down too. Bring it, dickhole. I can beat you. But, you know, maybe give me a few days to rest up. It’s only fair.

It’s amazing how much the sight of the supersuit gets people to cooperate. Even after months of working with the public, it’s still a little weird to me that I can just tell people what to do, and nine times in ten they won’t even question me. Being Dreadnought is more than wearing the cape, more than having my powers. I’ve got a heritage now. There’s something about the blue and the white that makes people see me as something more than an oddly strong girl who is barely old enough to drive. At first it was cool, but now it’s almost kind of scary. Every time I talk to a member of the public in uniform, the size of my responsibilities comes home to me.

There are things you never expect to deal with, that you never expect to happen to you. Even after getting superpowers and becoming a celebrity and all the other stuff, there’s some foothold on normalcy you try to keep. Nobody ever expects to get framed for murder.

“What’s going on?” I’ve slowed way, way down as I enter the gleaming canyons of the city core. “You know all those warrants the cops had out for my arrest?” asks Calamity. Far below me, on one of the main traffic arteries, I spot her riding her bike flat out up the wrong side of a six-lane boulevard. What appears to be every police car in the city streams after her, sirens wailing. “It seems they’ve decided to make an issue of them.”

I am Dreadnought. I am undefeatable. They came after me because I’m the one who scares them. Because they knew I was the most dangerous. Well, they were right, and I’m going to prove it to them. A smile grows on my face. Tomorrow…tomorrow I might retire. Take my savings and buy a little cabin out somewhere, hide away from the world so I can’t hurt anybody. But today? Today I’m going to beat some motherfuckers ’til they cry.

“Listen,” says Calamity, “I know it’s cheesy to go on about freedom and democracy and all that noise. God knows I’m an ornery, cynical cuss when it comes to that sort of talk. But that is what we stand to lose here today. Garrison said it straight out—he wants to end equality. He wants to kill democracy. His world is a world of blackcape dictatorships. If he gets a monopoly on superpowers, nobody will be able to stand up to him. Nobody. We don’t win today, our grandkids won’t even know what voting was.” Her eyes get hard. “We win this fight, end of story. Dying’s fine, but we ain’t losing. Anyone got a problem with that?” Nobody does.

I’m angling forward to go ruin the machine-gunners’ day when a bolt of yellow lightning thunders out of the clear blue sky right in front of me. The flash clears, and Garrison floats in front of me. He’s wearing the most blunt, obvious, I’m-here-to-rule-you-peasant supervillain getup I’ve ever seen: a black bodyglove with a white cape that’s got the huge flared collar and is edged with gold—he’s even wearing a circlet, an actual literal crown. “Dreadnought. Why aren’t you falling to your death?” “Because you’re not actually the smartest person in the world, Garrison,” I reply. “You may call me Sovereign.” “I’m gonna call you Dingus.”

The first rule of combat is to get in the first shot. The second rule is that cheap shots are the best shots. I really like the second rule.

Sovereign isn’t following me in. He’s floating out there, arms crossed, a punchably smug grin on his face. Another segment of drywall I was using to haul myself to my feet cracks and crumbles under my grip as that rage I need so much finally arrives. I’m gonna feed you your teeth, old man. Maybe I haven’t figure out how yet, but you’re going to a hospital one way or the other.

over here, and then put her down hard.” There’s a long silence. Or maybe not that long. Time gets funny when people want to kill you. “Danny, she’s twelve.” “If she’s old enough to fight, she’s old enough to lose.”

I’m tougher than he imagined I was, and more deliberately cruel. They never see it coming. They never expect that someone who looks like me could have so much calm, considered malice at her disposal. By the time they figure it out, it tends to be too late.

That’s how we came to organize an olly-olly-oxen-free for every Silver Mountain goon who hadn’t been taken out in the fighting. Calamity got on the PA and told them what was up and that they had ten minutes, and then she was going to personally shoot every goon she could find who hadn’t surrendered or fled. Further, she informed them that she’d run out of everything except plain old lead bullets. It turned out to be a powerful motivator.

“And how are they going to do that when they’re deciding if it’s even worth keeping you out of prison? Whoever you had spying on me should have done a better job of reading my mail—my federal hero license finally came through.” It was a close call. The license arrived while I was in jail, and Cecilia had to make some big promises—desperate promises, really—to keep it from getting instantly suspended until my trial was complete. Garrison’s face goes blank. I think he knows what’s coming, but it’s so fun spelling it out: “You’re about to get acquainted with my three favorite words in the world—civil asset forfeiture. When I was in the holding cell, Cecilia did an analysis of your public earning statements compared with the sort of costs that would be necessary to fund this operation, and it looks like your entire fortune is bound up in this scheme, isn’t it? That makes everything you own an accessory to kidnapping, murder, and terrorism. So we’re seizing it all. Every company you own, every account you hold, every last penny. I bet it’ll be hard to pay for lawyers when your money is all tied up in court. When you said you could make me a rich woman, you weren’t thinking you would do it this way, were you?” “Nothing you can prove I’ve done is illegal,” he says, but with the way his skin has gone the color of sour milk, I don’t think anyone believes him. “Spectral evidence is inadmissible. You can’t prove a thing.” “Once she’s done sewing up your men, the best hacker in the wo...

“Why don’t you just leave us alone!” shouts Panzer. She’s at the edge of tears, and for a moment I feel bad about saying all that to her dad in front of her. “Because of you, the world’s going to keep drowning in poor people and losers!” Welp. Never mind.

She did it. She really did it. Graywytch told me this was coming, and I didn’t realize what she meant. When she had me strapped down to that table in the dungeon below Cynosure, she said women can only be pushed so far before they push back. And of course, her definitions of man, woman, and push are all so fucked up it could have meant anything. It could have meant anything, but it meant this: The flat-out murder of half the human population. All the signs were there, and I missed it. Her neglect of her superhero duties. Her strained alliance with Garrison. The shoddy magic she performed for him—almost as if her real concern was somewhere else, on a different project. Now that it’s happening, I can see how they all fit together: if her definition of what makes a man and what makes a woman isn’t respected anymore, she’ll simply remove men from the discussion. “Men” like me. Like anyone with a Y chromosome, I bet. More than three-and-a-half billion people, all dead, and then a mad scramble to figure out how to keep the species going.

We stare at each other for a long time. She’s got dried vomit all over her chest. I make a sweeping gesture toward the mess. “Let me guess: your spell was targeted to the Y chromosome, but you’ve never had a karyotype test.” It’s such a left-field question that it startles an answer from her. “What?” “Your chromosomes. You never had them tested, did you?” Her brow furrows, and the first emotion that isn’t fear works its way onto her face. Disgust. “Don’t lump me in with you. I’m a woman. I menstruate.” “So? Sex is just as fuzzy as gender is. You might not be trans, but you could be intersex. If you’d just looked it up you’d see there are women with Y chromosomes who can give birth. It’s not common, but it happens.” She huffs. Graywytch seems so much less impressive now. “No. Magic is dangerous. I miscalculated, is all. Standing this close to the center, it could have gotten anyone.” I get to my feet. “Maybe. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to think about it in prison. I bet they’d even run a blood test for you, if you asked.” I hold out my hand for her. “Get up. I don’t think I’m strong enough to carry you safely yet, so we’ve got to hike out of here.” She looks at my hand, wary for a trick. “For fuck’s sake, Graywytch, I’d just kill you if I was going to.” She takes my hand and lets me pull her to her feet.

“If you’re looking to prolong the pain, I can tell you I won’t give you the satisfaction. I’ll die fighting first.” “We’re going to hike back to New Port so you can get arrested.That’s all that’s going to happen, I promise.” She still doesn’t believe me; it’s etched in her face. “Why? Why spare me?” I smile. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m better than you.”

For more than fifty years, Mistress Malice was the heavyweight champion of supervillains, with over a quarter-million confirmed deaths during a six-month rampage. Graywytch made Malice’s crimes look like a liquor store robbery. They’re still counting the dead, but it’s easily the worst supervillain attack in history. The global death toll might top three million, mostly men, but hundreds of thousands of women died as well. Not just trans women and intersex women, but cisgender women too; nearly ten thousand airliners crashed when their (overwhelmingly male) flight crews were disabled by her spell. Not to mention women who were on the operating table with male surgeons who collapsed, who were killed in traffic accidents and building fires, or any number of collisions caused by half the human species falling over all at once. Graywytch killed some of every kind of person that exists.

The one thing that everybody agrees on is that those damn satellites need to go. Nobody should have the power to cast a spell over the entire planet ever again. I boost up into orbit again and start knocking them down. Red Steel sends me another email, congratulating me on my victory, and stating that because his employer turned out to be a criminal and the satellites were weapons of mass destruction, that he has generously decided he will not be seeking vengeance upon me for defying his warning. I send him a fluffy cat picture in reply.

😂

“The current state of affairs cannot continue. The Nemesis’ proximity to Earth will continue to create quantum instabilities and promote the development of alternative physics models. That it exists as a singular object and obeys the laws of gravity suggests that the fundamental skein of reality will remain intact, but beyond that, it is difficult to predict where this will take us. So we come to find we are faced with two choices. We can return the Nemesis to its three-thousand-year orbit and see the slow leeching of superpowers, magic, and hypertech from the world until it returns again. Or, we can keep it behind the moon and inevitably create a world where everyone has access to this kind of power.”