Killing Olympia

I haven't done homework in nearly a year, but that's what I've got due tonight before I leave with Becca. By the time I get home, I've got about three hours to myself—the house is entirely empty, which means lucky me, I can puke in the bathroom all I want and get the taste of Irina's saliva out of my mouth. I coughed, I spat, I wiped the saliva off my lips, and brushed my teeth so vigorously the bristles on my toothbrush were flat by the time I was done. I tossed it into the trash and stood at the mirror, gums aching, teeth squeaky clean, staring at my reflection.

I could still feel her tongue wandering around my mouth. I could still feel it slide over my teeth and over my own tongue as her lips had crashed against mine. I put a fist to my mouth and shut my eyes. Swallowed. Tried not to wince as I swallowed more bile. I turned away from my reflection and looked at the blood on my knuckles.

I shook my head, then turned on the faucet and splashed water onto my face. Shit together, soldier. I let it run for a while longer, listening to it circle the drain. I tried to keep my jaw neutral and my hands from cracking the ceramic sink. Mom's already had to fix this thing several times over because of me, and I guess it wouldn't be fair to shove another problem onto her. I just… What the fuck? What the fuck was that? I forced myself to breathe normally, to not make myself shake so much. But it kept rolling through my head over and over again. Slower. Wetter. Fouler. My tastebuds were clinging onto the taste. Her taste. What made her think she had the goddamn right? I've killed people for less. Way less. So why did I let her… I stood up and let her live? Me? I stared at myself in the mirror for so long I didn't even realize the ceramic had cracked under my fingers. I didn't realize my hands had gotten so tight to stop themselves from shaking. I spat into the sink again. Dragged my hand across my lips.

"Job to do," I whispered to myself. "You've still got shit to do, Rylee, and it was just a kiss."

One I didn't fucking ask for. One that she got away with. You know the problem with villains? They feed off one another. Capes know I won't turn them into a past tense instance. Supervillains, thugs, gangsters, and the rest of them knew that I very much would. 'Restraint' my fucking ass. Lower Olympus isn't at the 'restraint' stage of being rebuilt yet. That would be for when superheroes are more than a fancy buzzword that gets people arguing. I personally think there needed to be a line. And they still hadn't learnt what that was… except that wasn't me, either.

That was what anyone else in the Empire would say. They might hate me for even being alive.

But they'd really love the fact that I made the humans so scared of what I could do that, once the Empire got here, the humans might collectively give up in droves, however stubborn they liked to think they really were.

The solution was pretty damned easy—kill the bad guys, save everyone else. Superhero basics, right?

I heard my phone vibrate from across the hallway. A few contacts had special ringtones, this was one of them—Bianca's, to be exact. I backed away from the mirror, both hands on my head. I looked beat. I looked bloody. I needed to shower, and probably wash this costume whilst I was at it. My phone was ringing though, and it was the one person who'd probably leave my head a little clearer than it was right now. Or worse. Whatever the case, it would be focused on her, which was a lot better than wondering why Kingcaid didn't know where Wasteland was.

I pulled off my boots and sprawled onto my bed face-first, grabbing my phone on my way down. I picked it up and put it on loud speaker, leaving it beside my head. "Hey, B," I said, rolling onto my back. "How's it going?"

"Hey, Ry," she said. I heard muffled talking in the back, then a door shutting behind her. "I was just, you know, checking in on you after what happened. You haven't replied to my texts and I was getting a little worried."

I rested my hands on my stomach and shut my eyes. I could listen to her voice forever, tell you what. "I've just had a pretty long day. I didn't have a lot of time to check my phone. But, hey, about what happened—it's fine."

"You don't have to lie to me so I can feel better, Rylee."

"Yeah, I know," I said, maybe a touch defensively. "I just nosebleed easily sometimes."

She snorted. "I've known you for years and that's never happened."

"Well, maybe I'm kinda crushing on you a little harder now compared to back then," is what you wish I would say to her. Instead, I flaked out, because Rylee Addams is a coward in the face of gooey emotions. Bite me. I took a deep breath, sighed a little, and said, "Bianca, I promise you it's alright. Besides, I can't be mad at you."

"I just…I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't know what's going on with me. Sometimes I hear this voice—"

"Hey, are you free tomorrow?" I said, rolling onto my side, looking at my phone.

She hesitated, then said, "I've got my first couple of classes in the morning. Why?"

"Maybe you can take me around a little," I said. "You know, like another not-date. A do-over not-date."

I'm a wordsmith, I know. I get it from my famously very emotionally well-rounded mother.

"I… Are you sure?" she asked. There was a quiver in her voice. A tiny quake that made me rest up onto my elbow. I almost wanted to go over to Olympus U right now and knock on her dorm door, but unfortunately, I had stuff to do tonight before I left with Becca. If I went there, I wouldn't be leaving. And besides, that's insane, going to her place at this time in the night. "The whole place might be a little underwhelming for someone like you."

I smiled a little. "And what does that mean?"

Her voice quieted. "It means that you've probably seen the whole world. A campus tour would be kinda boring for you. Besides, I'm not really sure it would be a good idea for me to be around you. For both of our sakes."

My gut coiled. I sat upright and folded my legs, phone cradled in my hands. "Don't say that."

"I've hurt you twice, Rylee. I don't even know what's going on with me! I-I vanish for a couple of months, but I can barely even remember what happened! I come back, and I hear this voice in my head, and I see Ben—"

"You see Ben?" I asked quietly.

"Yes! Yes I fucking see Ben," she said. She was breathing a lot harder now. "Sometimes he's just standing there, and sometimes he's just here with me. He never says anything, but he's always smiling and nodding and staring at me and I feel like I'm losing my freaking mind!" I was putting on my boots before I even knew it, phone my bed as I decided otherwise. Normal people's clothes would be better than a blood-soaked costume. A sweatshirt, some jeans, basketball sneakers, and I looked like someone who hadn't almost beaten a girl to death just a few hours ago. I put on my headphones and connected them to my phone, and suddenly, her voice rang through my skull the moment I cracked open my window. "And I just—" Sharp breath. Whispering to keep herself together. "I'm okay. I'm fine. I think…I think I'm just tired. I didn't make it onto the track team. My head was so fuzzy today—"

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"Fuck me," I said, pausing at my window. Bianca paused. I tried not to groan as I looked into the sky.

"Rylee?" Bianca asked. I hated the way her voice sounded coming out of her mouth. Bianca Ross was a lot of things, but she wasn't meek, she didn't second guess herself—and she shouldn't be so afraid of her own body.

Unfortunately, as always, the world came knocking.

"I'm here," I said, watching Sentry lower through the sky, the gusts of wind coming from her wings shaking the few leaves slowly coming to life on our trees. "And I'm gonna be there in a few minutes. I promise, 'kay, B?"

"What?" she said, her voice hitching. "Like, right now?"

"Yeah. Well, in a couple of minutes. Thirty tops."

"But…Jesus, Rylee, I just came back from tryouts. I'm still sweaty and my room is a mess—"

Sentry tilted her head at me, then tapped her wrist. Don't have all day, her face said.

"And I'll be there to help you clean up. Your room. Clean up your room."

"Uh. Sure. Okay. Yeah, that's fine." Silence, then: "Are you sure you want to risk it?"

"Was talking to you the best thing I ever did?" I said, not just thought. I shut my window behind me and stood on the tiles outside my bedroom, the wind bitter against my cheeks as my heart hammered against my ribs.

The gap between my voice and hers felt like an eternity. I almost thought she wouldn't respond.

"Smooth," Bianca giggled. I smiled and swallowed my heart. "Alright. See you in half an hour."

I removed my headphones and spread my arms. "I'm kinda busy, birdie."

For once, she wasn't wearing the typical Olympiad government-mandated suits. Tight white tank top, a pair of acid-washed jeans, and flip flops—she kinda looked like a hippie angel, even with a headband around her forehead that kept most of her hair out of her face. A very serious, very unpleasant face. "I don't appreciate that."

I floated toward her. "The nickname or the fact that you're kinda blowing my cover right now?"

"I'll ignore the hypocrisy of you defying gravity and cut to what I came here to tell you." She pulled a flash disk out of her pocket and handed it to me. "Kingcaid wants you to have this. We've compiled information on Wasteland. After you contacted him earlier today, a few of us were sent to inspect his current captivity. Turns out—"

"That I was right?" I said. "Fucking knew it."

"That's not something you celebrate," she said dryly. Sentry folded her arms. "We've got a problem if we can't even keep track of our own prisoners. S-Grade prisoners to be exact, because according to our feeds and our own check-ins today, Wasteland is still in his cell." I paused and looked at her. "He's right where we left him."

"But you just said I was right about spotting Wasteland earlier today?"

"Clone," she said simply. It felt like I'd just gotten punched in the gut. "We ran what tests we could on him after a heavy sedation process. His readings came back weaker. More impure. I don't know if you've been told this yet, but clones tend to have cells that decay at a faster rate. They age quickly. Die faster. Wasteland's clone was the same. In human years, he'd be about a few months' old. Possibly a year and a half at most. He's not the real one."

I stared at Sentry, then quietly said, "And none of you people even knew that?"

"We've been breached on a scale we didn't think was possible."

Understatement of the fucking century there, birdie.

"Gods," I swore. "What happens now?"

"We recover the real Wasteland's body and keep it in a secure location for testing. His entire body is irradiated, and the more his body decays, the worse it'll be to clean up the fallout. His body will be useful for us."

"You already know where he is?"

"We already turned the house he was staying in into a flat piece of land, turned the soil, and tried to talk down that girl who was stubbornly hoarding his body. She resisted. Then she ran away. We soon lost track of her."

Irina being let loose somewhere in Lower Olympus was such wonderful news. I really couldn't believe my luck today. At all. At the very least, Wasteland's body was being dealt with, and they knew about Irina too. For once it felt like I was on the same page as someone else and not on a completely different book like it usually was, too.

"I just don't get it though," I said quietly. "How are there so many of them?"

"The clones?" she asked. I nodded. Night in the neighborhood was early and silent. Kids were indoors and the wind danced around us, clinging onto winter's coattails. I checked my phone. Still enough time to see Bianca. "It's a theory right now, and a silent one at that—there's a group of ten people we can currently trust that aren't in the immediate line of fire, and ten more that aren't compromised. It can't be confirmed, but Blackwood Pharma have been gathering cell samples for years. It's part of their healthcare initiative. Every single hospital they help, every single blood drive, every single donation process and pharmacy that uses their equipment, pays them back tenfold with the information alone. It also turns out the power-dampening cuffs we use to apprehend superhumans was funded by them years ago, so long ago it goes back to Cassie's grandfather. It started out as national security, to know what makes superhumans what they are and why they are that way—but ever since she took over the firm…"

I bit my tongue and looked away. I almost miss the days when Lucas was my biggest problem.

"What happens now?" I asked. "Doesn't that mean we're all kinda screwed?"

"It means we'll move cautiously. We're having to re-test everyone in our cells right now. I personally don't like our chances, but it's our job to be hopeful, right?" Sentry slowly shook her head. "The man we found was the same. We had to use…unpleasant methods to get answers, but we did—unfortunately, Cassie was very thorough."

"What does that even mean?"

"That we're up against someone who can influence superhumans without them even knowing," she said. "According to the public, she's not got powers. According to us, she's got the Olympiad eating from her palm."

"You're telling me a single person might be controlling the world's largest superhero force?"

"It almost makes you wish we were born into a different generation, when times were easier, no?"

"Preach to the choir, sister," I muttered. "Got someone you know who can time travel?"

Maybe so I can wring baby Cassie Blackwood's neck before she becomes a pain.

"No, and if I did, I'd want to meet the Peacemaker."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why him? His comics sucked."

"He was the founding father of what it means to be a superhero," she said, spite in her voice. "Not just because his comics 'sucked.'" It came with air quotes, if you're wondering. "Where I come from, that's blasphemy."

"And where do you even come from?"

"A place that doesn't matter to you right now," she said, turning around. "I'll keep you informed on what happens with our prison run-down. So far, we've got roughly five thousand cells to go through, and have only just started on the second half of the S-Grades. You did good work today. Without your whistleblowing, we'd have only found out much later on." Sentry lifted into the sky, then looked over her shoulder. "I have a question for you."

"Make it quick, I've got to be somewhere soon," I said, and yes, even though I kinda did stumble onto Wasteland today, it still meant I helped them, which was…new. Usually my misadventures left me empty-handed.

"Are you…exclusively into women?"

I opened and shut my mouth to answer, then shrugged. "Where I come from, that doesn't really matter."

"For Earth's sake," she said, turning around again. "Please do not procreate. You're enough to deal with as one person."

With that, she carried herself into the sky, gliding soundlessly into the clouds until she vanished.

I didn't know what she meant by that, or if I should feel offended—I guess I didn't really care.

Because I had someone I needed to make smile, even if it was for just a few minutes. It'll be a very long, very filthy night after that, so I'm gonna enjoy myself while I can.

And if it meant seeing Bianca happy, then I'll take the risk, even if it hurts me.

Hey, I've survived worse. What's a few minutes alone in her dorm room?