Killing Olympia

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The Lower Olympus subway station was a disaster just waiting to happen. Sophie stood on the ledge of a nearby bank building that had probably been shut down months ago. What hit her first was the smell. It was seemingly the first thing that kept hitting her the longer she was in Lower Olympus. The heat wasn't making it any more pleasant either. Unwashed bodies. Sweaty. Cramped. Rats and dogs and cats were being cooked over fires set alight in trash cans, and various subway entries had birthed their own little communities around them. Sophie's mouth drew into a thin line. Why'd I have to get stuck doing the crappy jobs? she thought. She should be training right now, too.

But hey, maybe the end of the world wasn't that important to Cassie after all. Whatever. Her job wasn't to do any of the thinking. All she had to do today was seize several hundred thousand dollars worth of arms inside those tunnels. A gun smuggler was running an operation down there, making sure people had 'protection' from all the riots and looting and chaos going on in the city. They were probably shitty knockoffs, but guns are guns, and metal is metal, and she guessed that thinking about any of this wasn't her job either—so it was time to get going.

Sophie tapped her ear. "I'm gonna get down there and try to see if I can find one of his runners."

Gold-Star's deep voice filled her head a moment later from her ear piece. "Wear the mask. All it'll take is one of them seeing your face and thinking you're Olympia. We don't need attention. All we need is efficiency."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," she muttered. She was wearing her new costume, too, despite Gold-Star being against it. Predominantly black, with scarlet on her torso and a black domino mask to boot. It was still so new that it felt too tight, too grabbing—it clung to her body like it never wanted to let go, and a part of her didn't want it to. Sophie pulled the mask out from her hoodie's pocket and fit it onto her face. She had to wear street clothes over her costume, anyway. Filthy jeans, beat-up sneakers, a hoodie several sizes too big. She'd look like any other kid wandering around in a place they shouldn't. She doubted a lot of people here really cared to ask where her parents were, either. "In case I lose connection, know I'll only come back once the job's done. I'll unload at the dropoff."

"Got it," he said. "I'll give you a two hour operating window. More than that, and I'll be down there."

"I don't need a babysitter."

"Prove you can do your job right, and I won't have to act like one."

Sophie left him with a colorful parting gift, then crushed the ear piece between her fingers. Whoops. Lost connection, old man. She'd never truly been left alone. Always some agent or manager or Cassie trailing after her, as if they didn't trust her to walk in a straight line. For as long as she could remember, somebody had been in her ear. It might not be the most glamorous place, but for once, she could roll her shoulders, put on her headphones to block the noise from the street below, and leap off the edge of the building. She landed in an alleyway, splashing into an old greasy puddle. She didn't care. She pulled the hood over her head and started walking, hands in her pockets.

The entrance to the subway station was a mess of bodies and markets and people shouting at one another. Arguments about what the government wasn't doing. Fighting about who should be in charge now. A lot of people wanted the president gone as soon as they could get the chance. She'd never seen a burning ragdoll before, but one had been hung by the neck and set on fire just a moment after she passed the group of men doing it. The general feeling was pretty simple to understand: the government isn't telling us the full truth, and now we're all dead.

Either that, or something had shifted in everyone's mind at the same time.

Sophie stopped walking. It was so sudden that several people bumped into her, stumbled and spat at her. But she couldn't take her eyes off the brick wall not too far away from the subway entrance. A wall that had once belonged to a building but not anymore. People leaned against the wall. Flowers littered the ground around it. The entire street was filthy. Mud. Sewage. Gravel and rubble. All of it strewn all over the ground. But not near the wall.

Because someone had spray painted Olympia onto it. A portrait so big it overlooked the crowd.

She looked so…regal. So ready. So set. Her jaw was tight, her lips were thin—and her fist was in the air above her head, burning with golden light. Several people around the wall kept trying to speak to passerbies. But this was Lower Olympus. People kept walking, ignoring them, but not before they spared a glance at Olympia.

Her better judgement was silenced for just a moment as curiosity won out. Curiosity and humor.

Because, well, c'mon. Flowers? Melted candles? A few people even had yellow paint on the back of their hands. Normal, regular, average people were idolizing her? Yeah. Sure. Like Olympia ever did anything for them.

Sophie pulled off her headphones. Sound rushed into her skull. She winced as it slowly dimmed. She walked up toward the man wearing a torn-up red snow jacket, his right hand entirely yellow, trying to hand out a pamphlet to passerbies. He stopped calling to people, then spotted her looking at him. He smiled, teeth yellow, some of them missing, and got closer to her. He smelt like concrete and cigarettes. And for all his unwashed being, he had a weird warmth to him. A sparkle in his eyes that made her skin crawl. He offered her a floppy pamphlet.

"Interested?" he asked, gesturing for Sophie to take it. "We don't ask for anything apart from your time."

Sophie grabbed it from him and flicked it open. She expected to find some kind of weird cult brochure. Instead, she found story after story of people talking about Olympia. The more she scanned, the more bitter her mouth became. These have got to be fake, she thought. One after another, from children to old men, to women and younger girls who dressed up like her. She brought us to a soup kitchen once and even ate with us. She forced a villain to take us to the hospital. Without her, I don't think we would've had running water. Sophie ripped it up.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"These are all bullshit, you know," she said, letting the wind scatter the pieces. "She's probs dead."

The man smiled softly. "Whether or not that's true—"

"Which it's not," a woman sitting against the wall muttered.

"It's what she represents to us that matters," he said. "No matter what, we believe in her."

Sophie's nose shriveled, as if she'd smelt something awful. "You make her sound like some goddess."

"She's imperfect, sure, but aren't we all?" he said with a shrug. "Besides, all those superheroes in the Olympiad and on television and even in the movies not once lived and fought and breathed the same air as us. She was the reason crime wasn't so active. Murder is…messy. It's morally complex. But she made sure she kept the kids safe from the very same kind of men who'd very easily take them off the street and traffic them across the world."

Sophie snorted and swept her arm around her. "Yeah, and what a great freaking job she's done so far."

He shook his head. "This isn't her fault. The government, our very own fears…" He glanced at the sky, swallowed, then looked at her again. "Regardless, she'd not want us to give up. Life wasn't easy on her, but she never gave up. Not on us. Not on her vision for us, either. When people like Cassie Blackwood—" The people with golden hands as well as passerbies spat on the ground at the sound of her name, making Sophie's skin prickle. "When people like that woman preach about making this city so great again, she sends her thugs to deal with us. No food. No aid. Simply professional mercenaries who harass and hate and threaten us simply for our circumstances."

"Damage Control…" Sophie stops speaking, then chews on her tongue. You're getting worked up, Soph. She breathed in through her nose, breathed out through her mouth, then stepped back. "Whatever, man. She got her ass handed to her by that guy. For all anyone knows, Olympia's dead." The street almost freezes instantly. Sophie looked over her shoulder. The milling continued. The eternal struggle to shove through the crowd kept going. But so did the staring. So did the sharpened glares. Now more than ever, she noticed just how many people had a streak of golden paint on the back of their hands. What the hell? She cleared her voice and licked her dry lips, then looked at the guy standing behind her in the red coat. "The Olympiad is gonna help. Just give 'em some time."

The woman beside him snorted, then spat a goblet of black saliva near Sophie. "Boot licker."

"What the fuck did you just—"

The man put his arm out, his face suddenly hard. "I think you should go."

Sophie pushed away his arm, then shot one last look at the woman next to him. She turned around and left the portrait on the wall, something inside of her gut smoldering with a fire so hot she wanted to vomit ash. But there was still a job to do. A mission to complete. A fucking smuggler to break in half. Despite the glares, she descended into the subway entrance, getting swallowed by darkness, heat, humidity, and something that smelled like old rot.

For a brief period, the cramped stairwell was pitch black. Only for just a moment.

But in that handful of seconds, weak golden light shaded the outline of bodies, turning them into long silhouettes that grumbled and pushed and squeezed past one another. Sophie looked around, wondering where the light was coming from. The subway was dead. The trains hadn't run in months down here. So where the hell was…

Above her.

She reached the platform and looked up. Bodies moved past her. Voices echoed, pressing against the music in her head. She stared at the golden lightning bolt painted on the subway ceiling. Stared at the murals inside the subway around her. Piles of flowers, none of them old. Kids slept underneath graffiti portraits of her, wrapped in old blankets. Sickly green bulbs hung from exposed wires. An entire market had grown and festered inside the tunnel. Food. Old phones. Clothes being stolen off the rack and even scrap metal being bartered for stale soup and dirty water. But it was the golden light coloring it all. It was the posters with Olympia on them, arms folded, grinning, that made Sophie's jaw tighten so hard she heard something crack. She tasted blood. She swallowed it slowly.

All she could hear was her own heartbeat. All she could hear was its ruckus, rowdy thumping.

As if every single picture, every single plural and poster and painting, was staring at her. Accusing her. Demanding to know why she was even here. For just a moment, her brain went numb and so did her entire body.

Not with embarrassment, not with fear—with anger so righteously furious, her palms began to smoke.

Sophie stared at the ceiling. At the large bolt of lighting illuminating the entire subway.

She just couldn't fathom why anyone in their right mind would ever waste time making that.

Hell, maybe it's meant for Zeus. Probably. Cassie told me these people hated her.

"Overwhelming, isn't it?" Sophie glanced to her right. A girl was standing next to her. Long, raven black hair, pale skin and lacy tattoos. She looked like she hadn't slept in days. Then again, most of these people looked like they hadn't either. She had a strange marking on the back of her hand. A burn mark of a sigil that Sophie couldn't make sense of before she put both hands behind her back. The girl smiled at her. "First time down here?"

"What's it matter to you?" she asked.

"A lot," the girl said. Sophie's gut coiled. Her eyes narrowed. Superhuman. I can smell the virus in your veins. Gold-Star said no fighting, and in a place like this, it wouldn't be worth it. "You taste…different, Olympia."

Sophie paused. She looked around, scanned faced. Nobody was listening. Nobody cared enough about two girls standing in the middle of the platform to eavesdrop. So she looked at the girl and said, "What? I'm not her. Last I saw, she was on the news about to die. Heck, I heard that she's already dead and the government is just—"

"Your blood is a little different," the girl said, now closer. Sophie backed up. She bumped into someone who didn't move. She looked over her shoulder and found a mountain of a man standing behind her, his face grim, his eyes focused on something distant. Sophie looked back at the girl. She was so close that her nose almost brushed against hers. Her eyes slowly narrowed, and then she frowned. "No. You're not…you're not her, are you?"

"I just told you that," Sophie said through her teeth. "Now tell your friend to leave before I—"

"You sound like her, you smell like her, you…you almost look like her, but not really." The girl folded her arms and looked Sophie up and down, and then her eyes widened, and so did her smile. "You're that other one."

Sophie stepped forward, fingers splayed to go for her heart, fast enough so nobody would see her drop.

A heavy hand landed on her shoulder, meaty fingers stopping her dead.

The moment Sophie was about to speak, blood dribbled out of her nose and down her lips. Sophie ran her arm across her mouth, smearing blood on her face. And then she felt a pressure in her mind, almost like someone was digging their fingers deep into the meat of her brain. She winced and held her head, stumbled forward and landed in the girl's arms. She shoved away, stumbled again, fell onto one knee. Shattered tiles. Mud. Dirt. Sewage. Old food. Everything was beneath her. Everything grounded her. Blood trickled out of her nose. She spat more of it.

Sophie glared at the girl standing over her, panting from her mouth like a sick dog.

The girl smiled at Sophie, and in a heartbeat, darkness swept over her.

The very last thing she saw was her outline, vague, pale, and illuminated by Olympia's glowing lightning bolt.