Killing Olympia

Being a superhero means doing things you didn't always want to do, but if it meant other people got their happy ending, then who was I to complain? You put on the costume and you did the heavy lifting so normal people didn't have to. That's why cops wore badges and why the army wore their fatigues. It was a duty. A service. It's a way to make myself feel better about what I'm going to do. Little Olympus had its very own slew of seedy motels and strip malls that barely anyone ever used, which was the perfect place to keep a dismembered head. Ava, Taylor and I stood underneath the flickering, neon yellow light of a motel that had bullet holes in its sign and the stink of raw sewage coming from one of its rooms spray painted with DO NOT ENTER. It was the kind of place low-life villains liked to skulk around. Guys who had just enough power to flip over a police car but not enough to fight someone like me. It wasn't like I bothered with these kinds of places, anyway. It was life's dead end. You got nothing here.

And if you did get something from here, it was information that was ten years too late from a guy who couldn't even remember how he ended up in a grungy motel, anyway. Ava keeping Lucas' head here was…a choice.

But I doubted Lucas had that many friends just itching to set him free.

"It might not look like much," Ava said as she started leading us across the empty parking lot. Rusted cars. Broken down white vans. A vending machine that had been busted open was slumped against an old brick wall that still had movie posters from superheroes that were long past being superstar material. "And that's exactly the case."

"You didn't think about, I don't know, putting him in a bag and throwing him into the bay?"

Ava stopped and looked at me. For the first time that I could remember, she was wearing something other than a suit. A faded Olympus U sweater and jeans, a pair of snow boots and a baseball hat that nearly made her look a little more…normal, and not a girl whose body was frigid and whose heart was missing. "Rylee," she said. "In all honesty, Lucas wasn't meant to be my problem. He was never on my radar. He probably knew a lot about my father and thus about me, but on the other hand, playing with dead people isn't exactly on my very full to-do list, okay?"

"Fine, fine," I muttered. I looked up at the motel. Someone was peeping at us through the tiny blinds in their window. They vanished behind them as soon as we locked eyes. "I just don't think this place is very safe for keeping someone like him locked down. Lucas could be in a million pieces and I'd still think nobody was safe."

"He's just a head," Taylor said quietly, hands deep inside her hoodie. "How bad—"

"Very," Ava and I said.

She took the lollipop out of her mouth and looked around the dreary parking lot, her eyes hooded as she slowly took in the motel and all its glory. "Maybe mom was right. I should've paid more attention in school."

Ava handed me a set of keys, then said, "It's the final room on the third floor. There's no passcode, there's no magical lock. You'll find him, you've got the nose." She took the keys away before I could fully grasp them. She lowered her voice and got closer. "I'm giving you ten minutes. That's all. After that, I'm telling Taylor to move him, and no matter how good your nose is, you won't find him, not for a long time. Get the information you need, and get out. Do not let him talk you into anything. If he mentions names, run them by me, and I'll check how legitimate they are before you go out there and get yourself into a situation that leaves you vanishing for several months, Ry."

I frowned a little. "Why would you even do that for me? I can check them out on my own."

"No, you can't, because you're a superhero," she said. "Your job is to help people, and my job is to make sure that you're happy, and a happy Olympia means you stop worrying so much about girls and start worrying about the half of the city that's running on generators and oily tap water." Her words were cold, sharp, almost like tiny blunt impacts against my face as her breaths curled out of her mouth. Ava gave me the keys, still looking into my eyes. "I've tried bribing you, I've tried tricking you and possibly even lying to you—none of them worked, but at the end of it all, we're still in this mess together. I wasn't lying about us making Lower Olympus our own legacy. I wasn't lying about wanting it to be back to its shine. And the only way that happens is if your mind is settled."

"But why, Ava?" I asked. "Why stop what you're doing and go searching for names if L.O. is so impor—"

"Christ, Rylee," she said. "Just go up there and deal with him already. If you want an answer, it's this: I trade a day or two of searching and begging and scrapping together what I can, and you spend those days helping out the city knowing that Bianca is gonna be just fine. If Lucas lied, then he wasted my time, not yours. And then we find another way." She waved her hand upward. "Now get on with this. It's gonna rain soon and I don't have any other clothes that are remotely as fresh as these ones. Ten minutes. After that, Taylor comes in there and it's done."

I…

Huh.

For the first time in my life, I didn't have anything else to say. I had a bad habit of trying to get the last word in, but she was doing me a favor here, and if she was being honest—which was fifty-fifty, this was Ava we're talking about—then all I could really do was nod, squeeze her shoulder, and fly toward the top floor of the motel.

And immediately, the stench of something vile filled my lungs.

I was still in full Olympia gear, which meant the adjacent doors down the catwalk got locked and shut and barricaded from inside. It left me with the key in my hand and the rickety door in front of me chattering in the wind. Here goes. I turned the key and opened the door, and the smell grew worse. Sulfur. Rot. The kind of mangy stench that came from alleyways during the summer. I swallowed bitter saliva and walked inside, using my boot to close the door behind me. I stood in the darkness, looking around the dull room. The faded yellow light from the neon sign outside bled through the broken blinds, turning the filthy, blood-stained mattress and the chalk outline on the floor a garish, ugly shade of green. I walked deeper inside the room, past the broken television set and over bullet casings littering the floor. Down the hallway, the bathroom light was on, oozing out from underneath the door.

I stood in the short hallway and put my ear to the aged wood. Someone had put their fist through the drywall and maybe even something bigger, like a body, which meant the rusted plumbing and the wiry electrical intestines of the room were gushing out right in front of me. Every time someone flushed the toilet, the walls shook and the room filled with groaning noise. A leak trickled down the wall. A dead rat jolted when the wires it lay on sparked. But the bathroom wasn't silent. It gurgled and spat and the muffled voice of something came through it.

I didn't need to push the door very hard for it to open. It swung on its hinges, quietly squealing.

The bathroom was a crime scene. An assault so violent on my senses I vomited on the carpet.

I gagged and used the back of my hand to wipe the edges of my mouth. I won't go into details, because I'd just rather not stare at every stain, every mass, every rodent and every piece of something that looked like it might have once been human in here, but I found Lucas as quickly as the door had opened. There, bobbing in the black, sludge-like water in the bathtub, was his head, gagged, blindfolded, and lost in the trash and the bile and the… I paused and got closer, hovering to avoid the floor. Newspapers. Cutouts of articles from days gone. Each one of them was about Shrike. About the lives he saved alongside the gods he called his family. But they were pulpy masses of gray and white, the ink bleeding as turning every picture of him a nightmarish smear. One newspaper had even stuck itself to the side of his head, one with he and Ben standing either side of the mayor, proud and tall.

The word filth had been scrawled across the ceramic tiles above the bathtub in something dark and red.

Lucas' nose twitched. His struggle against the rubber gag wedged into his mouth stopped.

His skin was grey and bloated, fleshy and sagging. Whatever he'd done to keep himself alive was doing its job, except the human body didn't do great floating in liquids for weeks on end. By all intents, this was a corpse.

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Well, the head of one.

The only important part of him.

"It's me," I said. My voice echoed. The faucet dripped. The plumbing groaned. I pulled the blindfold off his eyes, and watched as he winced and blinked and squinted. His eyes slowly focused on me as I stood over him.

Then they narrowed, and his face morphed into a snarl. Maybe anger.

Maybe triumph.

I didn't remove the gag yet, because I didn't really fucking care. "I want answers," I said. His jowls moved, morphing into an ugly mile. "It's about Ben, and whatever the hell was inside of him. What the hell even was it?" I waited, because I wanted to see that smile slowly fade. I didn't have time, but I was going to be the only face he'd see in months, maybe even years—for all I knew, maybe ever. "I'm gonna remove the gag, and then talk, got it?"

He couldn't nod. Didn't matter.

I pulled the gag out of his mouth, a long, thick piece of rubber that went all the way down his throat. I dropped it in the bathtub beside him, splashing him in muck as I used a tiny burst of electricity to clean my fingers. Lucas coughed and spat and hacked up water that sucked up through his meaty severed throat, then looked at me.

"You're looking good," he said. His voice was harsh. Jagged. It dragged down my spine and made me itch. I rolled my shoulders and folded my arms, looking down at him. "Strong. Healthy. But if you're here begging for—"

"Answer the question, Lucas," I said flatly.

He tensed his jaw, then said, "And what do I get in return?"

"Nothing. You don't deserve to get anything from me in the first place."

"Aw, c'mon, Rylee," he said. Black water bled from his tear ducts and his mouth, from his ears and his pores, almost as if he was a sponge bleeding the waste around him. "This business has a currency, and information means wealth. I don't do handouts to a bitch so undeserving." Restraint. Restraint. Restraint. I counted to ten and back down to get, then stopped digging my fingers into my biceps. He's baiting you. Relax. Focus. This is all for Bianca. "Now if you're not gonna give me anything back in return, then put the gag back in and fuck off, Ry."

"Your sister is back in town," I said quietly. His mouth clamped shut. An emotion crossed his eyes that I couldn't read, nor did I care to. "She's staying over at our place. Really nice. Really dependable. Makes you look like the lesser version of Shrike. But that's typical, right? You can't make something for yourself so you ruin what someone else has going for them." I spat at him. It landed on his forehead and dribbled down his face. "Coward."

"Becca?" he snarled. "Oh, she isn't even half the chick you think she is. She's playin' a part."

"See," I said, crouching so we were eye-level. "I would've believed that this time last year, but you don't mean much to me now. Not anymore. She's done more for me in two months than you have for over ten years, so let's cut the bullshit, Shrike. You're alone. You've got nothing. Nobody. No more tricks to play. No more people you can intimidate or control. You'll live forever, and you'll rot forever, and maybe one day you'll go insane, and maybe one day you'll realize you wasted your life achieving nothing. So let me do you a service for once and make you realize something: it's been over a month since I tore your head off your body, and it's felt long, hasn't it? Now imagine reaching summer, imagine this time next year, after you're nothing but a bad memory to me. All that fight in you, and just to achieve nothing." I smiled. "Oh, man, you suck. Just do yourself a favor and do some good."

Lucas was inadequate. That was always the truth. He was afraid of Zeus and he was so terrified of Kayana that he'd managed to keep her out of this city for years with nothing but a secret. The other Olympians made him look like a diversity hire. The person the Normals could point at and say, Hey, if a guy like him can make it, then why can't I? So he leveraged information in the face of power, and look where that's gotten him, floating in a bathtub full of shit and decomposing body parts in the worst motel this city had to offer, staring at the face of a kid who he once had around his pinky finger. Lucas was all about optics. About looking bigger than he actually was.

Except now, he was just so, so small. The world had moved on.

When people thought about the Olympians, they thought about Zeus and Cleopatra.

Not the guy in the fucking bird costume.

I tilted my head. "Well?"

"Your father would've been disappointed in what you've become."

"Both of you can blow me," I said. "Now talk."

Lucas smiled sharply, his teeth rotting, his gums black. "Beg."

I picked Lucas out of the water by his eye sockets, digging my fingers so deep his eyes gushed out. I smashed his skull against the edge of the sink. Not with force. Not with a single ounce of power. I whacked and whacked until the bone caved in and the flaccid grey mass of his brain spilled out from the wounds. And then I dropped him onto the floor. I panted. Breathed so hard it hurt. My suit was blood. My face was covered in the stuff.

The girl in the filthy mirror stared back at me as I looked up, but if you think I felt bad—ha.

I felt great. So, so great.

Especially because Lucas, however quickly he was healing, screamed.

"It hurts," I whispered. I couldn't help but smile and use my boot to roll him up to look at me. "It hurts. Holy shit, I didn't think it actually would. When Ava was just a head, she seemed fine, but you? Must be different. Whatever you did, you probably didn't it wrong. Oh, man, this is so much easier." I picked him up again, digging my fingers into the side of his head. Blood trickled down the bathroom walls as I turned his head to look at me.

His misshapen jaw opened and closed as a slew of blood and shattered teeth spilled out of it.

"Gonna talk now?" I asked quietly. "Gonna beg, Lucas?"

His strangled, struggling silence answered me.

So I raised my arm and aimed him for the floor.

I just prayed the person living below me wasn't using the bathroom when Lucas goes through the tiles.

"Wait!" he slurred. I stopped, then looked at him. His skull was still dented and his jaw was still askew, but his eyes were bloodshot and desperate, wide and frightened. I'd never actually heard him beg. It felt…weird. Like hearing your parents crying or seeing your teacher break down. I waited for his jaw to settle back into place with a gristly crunch before he finally spoke again. "Go to hell," he moaned. Right, I thought. He's still Lucas. "Fine! Fine. I…" He paused. Swallowed. Bloody saliva spilled out from his severed throat. "Lucia Flores. That's all I'll say. Just… Rylee, I know I did you wrong, I know I should've done things differently, but you need me. Don't you know how much more we can achieve? There are gangs and cults and back-handed politics in Lower Olympus that you still don't know about, but with me? Rylee, we can change the world. We can be everything this city needs again."

"You were never what this city needed, Lucas," I said. "I just wasn't around yet."

"I made you who you are. I made you who you needed to be. Rylee, listen to me—"

"No, Lucas," I said quietly. Taylor appeared behind me. I didn't have to look over my shoulder to know it. Someone else was simply just there, maybe she had been for several minutes now. Again, it didn't matter. "We're done. Thanks for the lead, and she better have answers for Ben, because trust me, it'll hurt even worse next time."

"The girl's got the same sickness, hasn't she?" he said haggardly. He smiled wildly, grinning with his bloodied teeth. "Bianca Ross. The less important one. It must've been inside her since the boy died. He was smart. Always was. He got it from me." I raised my free fist. He quickly said, "You're not gonna save her, Ry. You're gonna be the reason her life gets worse. Just look at everything you touch. And that thing inside her? Oh, you don't know what it can do or what it can become. I know how to deal with it. I know how to keep her safe. All you have to—"

I put his head between my hands and squeezed. What was left sloppily splattered onto the floor.

The rest was smeared on the walls, trickling down the ceiling, and smattered all over the floor and my golden crest. I flicked my hands and got him off of me, then spat out a piece of his flesh. Gross. I stepped over the pile of Lucas on the floor and stood beside Taylor, who was staring at me from the corner of her eye, so rigid she could barely move. Every breath shook her body. Every time I shifted on my feet, she flinched, clinging even harder to the door frame. Her heartbeat was fast, her throat was dry, and I could hear the blood rushing through her veins. I looked over my shoulder at the mess on the tiles.

And then looked back at her and said, "A superhero's gotta do what she's gotta do, right?"

"Right," she whispered. "Should I…um…even…uh…" Taylor vomited. I made sure her hair was out of her face as she wretched. I sometimes forget that, well, this wasn't exactly normal. And it wasn't supposed to be. But Lucas was the exception, because even now, the sagging lump of flesh and bone on the floor was squelching and moving and staring at me with the solitary eyeball still attached to the socket by a dangling pink cord. I rubbed her back and led her out of the motel room, then locked the door behind us. It was drizzling, the rain almost so light it hung in the air like a sheet. It left Little Olympus smelling fresh. Clean. I stuck my hand out and watched the blood drip off my fingers and the rainwater seep into my costume. Taylor leaned against the railing, head hung, and cried.

"Where did Ava find you?" I asked quietly.

Taylor looked at me, her eyes bloodshot as snot hung on her top lip. An ugly crier for a girl who was kinda pretty in a grungy, rocker type of way. I leaned one elbow against the railing and waited for her to find her words. She swallowed, then said, "I was looking for work. I, uh, used to play in a band. But after the fires, a lot of my friends…" I didn't have to force her to keep talking. She stared at the empty parking lot for several minutes, not moving, just shivering. I put my arm around her and sent a soft pulse of electricity through her body, which left her shoulders less rigid and her face not as sharp. She glanced at me. I smiled at her. Taylor said, "You're fucking crazy."

Then she pulled away from me, took the keys, and vanished.

I was left staring at the bullet-riddled motel door, at the boarded up windows and the neon-lit parking lot. I sighed through my nose and massaged my face, getting the blood off my cheeks and out of my hair. I climbed onto the weak metal railing and flew into the air, not quickly, not suddenly—slowly, ambling, and for once, went home.

I'm gonna have a busy day tomorrow. Ava was going to keep her word. And that meant back to basics.

For now.

So let's go fight some crime.

And make sure mom doesn't ask why my suit reeks of blood.