Page 82 of All Superheroes Need PR
As a war child on Tratharine, the only thing Ineverhad was one thing that was mine. Vanessa’s mine now, and neither the past nor the present nor any of these fuckers can take her.
Where is she?
My hearing was always exceptional, and now it’s beyond that. I immediately count the cadences of four different sets of hands clapping to their own beats. I shrug my shoulders back, flex my hands, and when I blink, I meet each of their gazes.
I’m looking for Three, the one who hurt her, and I find them instantly. The compulsion to rip their head off before any of them can speak is strong. My right foot jolts forward, but I manage restraint. There are four of them, and while I might be strongest, I don’t remember what their powers are, and for me to get what I want, I need to survive this.
“You all work quickly,” I say, surprised by the sound of my voice. It sounds exactly like it did this morning. “What time is it?”
“It’s been half a day. We took you this morning,” says the same female who spoke before. She’s a white woman—she presents as a whitehumanwoman—with brown hair and freckles scattered across her nose. She’s short for a female, but her eyes sparkle blue. “I am Thirty-Eight.”
I scour my memory like a Rolodex, finally finding the correct entry. Meeting her gaze, I say, “You are a caster of spells, capable of creating powerful illusions in the mind.” She gives me a bow, but it is not a customary Tratharine bow. I frown. “You are Thirty-Eight, but you are not reverted. You do not remember the Tratharine ways.”
Her lips tighten. She is younger than I am by several years, but she was my senior in another life. Inourother life. But she doesn’t know that. She shakes her head, her gaze lowering.
“No. I have yet to revert. For some of us who fell, our neural implants were faulty. Either our memories were somewhat intact or we regained them over time. But only partially. And the ...” Her lips twist as she fights an anger I can feel wafting from her as powerfully as a breeze. “The SDD was too difficult for us to crush without our true forms and without our weapons, and with our diminished numbers. We have not found our maps, and we don’t know how to find them. We need you to lead us, show us how, so that we may regain our true forms and claim victory over this planet and the pitiful creatures who inhabit it.”
“If that’s still what you want,” number Three interjects. Three ... the most powerful being here, the third most powerful within our ranks on Tratharine. At least, they were ... until I reverted before they did. I cannot let them revert. I don’t know how to stop them from it, so killing them will have to do.
I look at Three and quickly rein back in the fire that threatens to explode from my eyes. It’s easier to control as I remember all my training ... years and years and years of pain. I thought so little of the humans when I first arrived and was taken into the SDD facilities. But where I am from, Tratharine, the beings are perhaps even more simplistic, for the Tratharine are only one thing: cruel.
“You think I would have changed my mind?”
“I don’t know what to think, if I’m being honest,” the impish, dark-haired number Three coos. “I didn’t expect the Elders to make our keys so ... supple.”
I don’t let them bait me. I refuse. “The Elders, in case you’ve forgotten, didn’t make our keys at all. They expected us to find triggers on this planet that would manifest reactions in our physiologies so powerful, we would remember who we are.”
“The termkeywas a poor one, wasn’t it?” Three shakes their head, a dark wave falling to cover one of their eyes. They brush it back. “It led us to believe our keys would beobjects. But yours isn’t an object ... Or is it?” They smirk. “She is absolutely delicious. I only had the pleasure of a taste. I can imagine that having a feast every day would weaken your desire to follow through on the plan to rip her home world out from under her.”
I keep my tone calm. Cold. “The plan to enslave humankind? Combine our weapons into a gate and open it to the Elders so that they can take control of another planet? This one?”
There’s a stir among the gathered four. Three and Thirty-Eight stand alongside numbers Sixty-Nine and Twenty. Those two have powers I do remember. Sixty-Nine, a very young male with light-brown skin and black hair, has power over sand. Twenty is an older male with dark skin and white hair now, one of the oldest who was sent as part of our mission. He is powerful, with an ability to cause bodily pain through mental projection. He watches me critically as I flit my gaze back and forth over them all. No, I won’t be able to fight my way out of here like this.
I clear my throat. “Yes, I know their plans. I remember.”
“Theirplans?” Three asks. “Don’t you mean our plans?”
I am already making mistakes. Because yes, I may know our plans. And I know that, as the first reverted Tratharine, my purpose is paramount.I also know that plans change.
I growl, “No. The Elders have their own plans. Our plan is to get them here. We can only do that with our weapons, which I don’t seem to have.”
I glance around stupidly but with the express purpose of cataloguing my surroundings. I’m in a large warehouse. Much larger than I initiallythought, though I suppose, at my new size and with massive structures hanging from the ceiling, that tracks. Airplanes. There are planes up there and planes scattered all across the concrete floor of various shapes, models, ages, and origins. But this isn’t an airport. It’s clearly a hangar of some kind but, based on the ages of some of the planes, one that’s very out of date.
“Where are we?”
“You don’t know?” Three’s voice makes me want to punch them. They’re number Three and pissed off they didn’t revert first. I remember their original form vaguely, from before. Like number Four, they had an ethereal body. It made them powerful and extremely difficult to kill. I will not want to deal with them once they’ve reverted and, for all of our sakes, hope they never do. “You never solved your map?”
My growl picks up again, and I take a step forward. “I don’t answer to you,human. I had better things to do than solve riddles.”
“Like burying your head in that woman’s cunt? And it’s Three to you, Sixty-Two.”
They’re baiting me; I know that. What’s surprising is that it’s working. They can throw hierarchy power bullshit at me all fucking night, but I’m not gonna last if they keep talking about my girl. My growl reverberates more loudly.
Three takes a step toward me. Bold. Too fucking bold. I glance at their hands, knowing that these were the hands that touched her body, and I struggle to hold when I see that they filed their nails to sharp points to resemble the claws they had in a previous life. How cute. My own claws clatter against each other as my fingers flex. I feel vindicated when Three glances down at them and their nose wrinkles.
“You will tell me where we are and where my weapon is, or I will leave and continue my mission without your assistance. With yourclaws, you have hardly more utility than a human as is.”
Three’s upper lip curls away from their straight white teeth. They are a handsome human, but they are much prettier in their originalform. They want it back. I can feel their envy as tangibly as a touch. They take another step, hard shoes echoing over the concrete.
