Thousands of superheroes besieged the ABC Studios at Gore Hill. Their costumes weren’t much to write home about—fishnet stockings, baby-blanket capes, and grease paint domino masks abounded. As for superpowers, the only way this league would be diverting the course of mighty rivers was if everyone picked up a shovel and started digging.

That was, in essence, the basic idea. 

The news that Timothy Valour would be bootlicking the Yank witch-hunters¹ on the ABC had travelled down the wire like telepathy. After years of dread, climaxed by two terrorist attacks—the first alone having completely decapitated the Australian government—there was no way the Americans could barge in with another draft. Not even a demi-draft. Not when so many of those demis were children.

That last factor had drawn the attention of Save Our Sons². Australian supers in Vietnam got the Congress for International Cooperation and Disarmament³ and the Draft Resistance Movement involved. Anything about supers got the Friends of Clark Kent⁴ up and rearing. The need to scream at a broken world drew thousands more. 

It was probably one of the Friends who raised the idea of dressing up like superheroes. They probably would’ve told you it was a gesture of solidarity with superhumanity. An un-ignorable reminder of all the good supers had done for mankind. 

True enough, but it was also fun. Sometimes you needed fun. 

The two transmission towers were lighthouses surrounded by a gaudy human sea. Tides of beer-gutted Supermen. Waves of frizzy-haired, sun spotted Wonder Women with mismatched bracelets. Even some bold knockoff Flying Men⁵ (and women) in off-white, sweat-darkened lycra. They broke the banks of the carpark and grounds to flood the surrounding suburb. Enterprising children sold lemon cordial from their front lawns. 

And the sea roared:

“Superman stay home! Superman stay home!”

“Children are not nukes!”

“Draft pints, not supers!”

There were signs, too, of course. A vast forest of them. “REMEMBER THE COMET!” “CHILD-SNATCHERS GET THE ROPE!” and “YANKS GO HOME!” were held aloft in a thousand variations. 

One protestor’s sign was very straightforward:

“GIVE US BACK OUR SON!”

“The Scarlet Hurricane” wore bright red flannel pyjamas with a dark grey apron tied around her neck. Her face was concealed from the forces of evil under a metal cooking pot, with two triangular holes cut out for her eyes.

Her muffled voice yelled, “No Valour! No Val—” She groaned and lowered her sign. “Ah, bugger it.”

Angela Barnes pulled the pot off her head, panting hard. “Lord help me…” 

Her husband took the pot off his wife. Fred Barnes had chosen to come to the protest in his old dress uniform—in the vain hope someone with sway might see it and feel an ounce of shame— with a green domino mask for that Lone Ranger touch. And so hopefully people wouldn’t throw paint on him. “I told ya the helmet was a stupid idea,” he said, shouting to be heard over the chanting crowds.

Angela brushed a sweat-heavy lock of hair from her eyes. “Oh, be quiet, Fred.” Shaking her head, she raised her sign and got back to chanting. 

Mrs Barnes was still shocked Fred of all people suggested this trip. 

“I thought the only communists raised stinks like that,” she’d said with a tired half-smile.

Fred had grunted, “Better a communist than a Nazi.”

Even if Sydney weren’t the wolf’s lair, they needed to get away from Harvey. Away from the furtive gawking of their neighbours. The smug, tittering whispers hidden behind stage-acted sympathy. And the posters. Their son, staring dazed and scared in scratchy monochrome from every wall and noticeboard.  

They could afford the trip, thanks to what Chen Liu had left in their kitchen. Angela knew that boy was a good lad, deep down. Drew and Sophie could mind the shop for them. They had to keep busy somehow, with baby Julia off with friends on some commune, away from the raptor gaze of the freak-finders.

Angela stabbed at the sky with her sign. “No Valour! No Valour!”  

Hours passed like minutes, punctuated by the occasional gulp from a water-bottle and the dimming of the sky. Valour would be in the studio now, prepping for his two-minute hate. His recruitment spiel.

Angela hoped she never saw it.

An electric current threaded through the crowd. In a shout like a whisper, a woman in a yellow oilskin and a painted blue motorbike helmet asked Angela, “They take your kid, too?”

“Yeah.” 

Mrs Barnes didn’t elaborate. Even in this crowd, she didn’t know what would happen if she admitted to being the mother of the boy who blew up the Prime Minister. 

God help her, she was acting like she was ashamed of Arnold…

“…Fuck ‘em all,” was the woman’s only response.

“Damn right.”

The two women screamed their rage, along with hundreds of other mothers, fathers, and everyone else who dared love someone different. They bore each other’s grief like the Argo on their shoulders. 

This is what it must’ve been like at Jericho.

Eventually, a man in a sequined bathrobe and a purple wizard’s hat started handing out rotten eggs and expired fruit. 

Fred Barnes weighed a stinking grapefruit in his hand like it was a grenade. 

The front doors of the studio opened. Timothy Valour was hustled out between two expressionless Nordic giants in midnight suits, examining his shoes with his shoulders hunched in the universal pose of harried public figures scurrying between their dens. 

Produce arced through the air. Most of it splattered against the orange fluro barricades and police sentries that cut a path through the crowd to Valour’s idling helicopter. 

Fred screamed, “You bastard! I’ve killed men like you! Killed them!”

Valour, of course, kept walking.

“So have I,” he muttered.

Fred Barnes didn’t hear him, though. He was too busy wishing he was more like his youngest son.

Soon, the helicopter lifted off the ground, the chopping whir of its propeller blades forming an underbeat to the chanted insults of the crowd. Timothy Valour was gone. But the protest kept going. It would take hours for that kind of energy to disperse.

Angela, just beginning to feel gentle, distant reminders of how long she’d been on her feet, spotted something. 

She grabbed her husband’s shoulder. “Fred, look!”

Angela pointed at a sign a few rows back from them:

“HOW MANY DIED AT NORTHAM?”

Fred squinted. “You don’t think—”

Angela was already pushing Fred through the crowd. One small grace to being wheelchair-bound at a mass rally was that you could serve as a human snowplow. 

Fred barked, his tree-trunk arms fending the slower moving members of the crowd aside, “Come on people, out of the way! Crippled veteran coming through!”

Someone shouted, “Piss off, baby killer!”

Fred flipped the bird. “Wrong war, sonny!”

In five minutes they reached the sign. It was being waved about by a young, dirty-blond man in a costume a cut above the standards of the rally. Most of the protestors had just splashed some paint on the brightest cast-offs they could find. This boy was decked out in a ruffled peppermint suit, with a powder blue eye-mask and a feathered stockman hat. The lad on his right wasn’t half-bad, either. He wore a black cloak that made Angela break into a sweat just looking at it, his mouth concealed by a kerchief almost the same shade of red as the cowlick that protruded from under his hood. 

The girl next to them, though, she was the real stunner. Her costume was a pink, bedazzled leotard, paired with enormous horn-rimmed glasses. She was hanging off the arm of a crew-cut boy in old work overalls and laughing into his ear. Hopefully about how bloody out of place he looked.   

Angela cleared her throat. “Excuse me.”

The youths paid her no mind.

Fred let out a commanding shout, “My wife wants to speak to you lot!”

The four teens (and a few more people besides) swivelled towards the Barnes like startled owls. 

The boy in the stockman said, “Jeez, sorry mate. We didn’t hear ya!”

The costumeless one raised a finger. “Ain’t exactly a graveyard around here.”

Mrs Barnes ignored the lip. “I take it you’re from Northam? Back in WA?”

The boy in the cloak pumped his fists in the air. “Hell yeah!” 

The other teens exchanged puzzled looks.

His arms wilted. “Yeah, we are,” he said in a much smaller voice.

Angela continued. “So you’d have lived near the New Human Institute.”

“‘Lived near it’?” said the one in the hat. “Lady, we’ve been there!”  He actually started wagging his finger at the Barnes. “I’ll tell you what, there’s a lot about that place the papers aren’t talking about—”

“Our son was taken there,” cut in Angela, evenly. 

“…Oh.”

“Maybe we should find somewhere to sit-down,” said the girl in the leotard. 

The Barnes and the Northamites made their way down to the empty lot of dried-out grass and dirt that lay in the studio’s shadow, chosen as a rest spot by the protest. Belinda Waites laid out a beach towel for them to sit on. Face-painted children ran about them while their parents laughed and conversed over cheap sausages in bread. 

Angela tried to ignore them. It had to have been over a year since Arnold had even been in their home. How much longer? 

“Why don’t you have a costume, son?” Fred asked the lad with the crew-cut.

Eddie Taylor shrugged. “Didn’t feel like it.”

Belinda purred into his ear, “You mean you were embarrassed, love.” 

Bazza grinned and shook his hat at Eddie. “You mean he’s a total Scrooge.”

Eddie waved his hands like he was shooing away flies. “Look, I’m here, aren’t I?” He gestured about at the crowd scattered across the grass. “You don’t see these people dressing up like slopers⁶, do ya?”

Belinda smiled wryly at the Barnes. “As you can see, my fiancé is a man of great sensitivity.”

Angela noticed a ring flashing on the girl’s finger. She tutted. “Oh, honey, you both are far too young for that.”

Fred glanced at his wife. “It worked for us, didn’t it?”

“Just because we bet it all on black and won doesn’t mean we should go telling kids to do it.”

Eddie curled his lip. “Bit late to tell us now.”

“Technically not…” said Belinda. 

“So, what could your son do?” asked Al, trading one awkward subject for another. “We might’ve met him.”

Fred raised an eyebrow. “Most folks would ask his name, first.”

“Not when we’re talking about the Institute,” pointed out Al. 

Fred and Angela looked at each other. A small, tight nod. 

“He… zaps things away,” said Fred. “Teleportation, I think they call it.”

“Our son is Arnold Barnes,” admitted Angela. “They called him Elsewhere.”

A silence smothered under the chatter of thousands. 

Bazza saw the look on the Barnes’ faces. Like they expected to be spat on.

He broke into a broad grin. “Yeah, we know him! Great kid!”

“He helped us run some supervillains out of town,” said Belinda. “He also ran a lot of our dogs to the Moon, but what can you do?”

Fred smiled. “Was in the papers, that.” The smile faltered. “They didn’t mention my boy much…”

“Wonder why?” said Belinda sourly.  

“Listen,” said Fred. “What you’ve read about our Arnold since then… Canberra and Melbourne… you have to understand…”

Bazza raised his hand. “Hey man, we heard what went on at that place. If I could do a smidge of what Arn and his mates can do, I’d probably be chucking some big fits, too.”

“Yeah,” said Belinda. “I once painted my sister’s kitten with nail polish because she wouldn’t lend me her jumper. Wasn’t even my size.”

“How about we tell you how we met your son?” Bazza offered.

The story was edited somewhat. Eddie couldn’t bring himself to explain what Melusine had done to him, or how they’d been made to forget about it for months. The Barnes didn’t need that clogging their thoughts as well. Also, Eddie didn’t need Belinda knowing why they’d gone to the Institute in the first place.

Best not to mention Melusine at all, really.

Fred was laughing by the end. Angela was trying very hard to keep frowning:

“I’m going to give that boy such a belting…”

“Aww, lighten up woman!” said Fred. He shot a glance at the lads. “No harm no foul, right lads?”

“He’s right, Mrs Barnes,” said Eddie. “Should thank Arn, really. I’ll be dining out on this story when I’m a hundred.”

To Eddie’s surprise, he meant it. Funny what time could do memories like that. 

Then they explained their adventure with the Frightful Three. Those brief golden days when the Institute was actually a part of Northam. 

The stories were like water in the desert for the Barnes. Something of their son not filtered through hateful headlines. 

“We decided to head over here after school was done,” explained Al. 

“Well, Bazza decided. Hard,” said Belinda. 

“Everyone was being so bloody phony.” 

“Language,” Angela cautioned the boy.

“Well they were! Folks were acting like those kids were devils, when they’d been giving them free ice-creams last Sunday!” Bazza folded his arms. “Total rubbish.”

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “I used to think they were goblins too, but least I’d never talked to them.”

“Thank you for telling us about all this,” said Angela. “And for coming here. For caring.”

“Least we could do,” said Al.

“No, the least you could do would be nothing. And altogether too many folks are fine with doing noth—” 

Thunder cracked the air.

Everyone glanced instinctively up at the sky. It was summer-barren. Perfect blue.

“Huh,” said Al, “someone’s car backfire?”

Another peal, its echo drowned out by younger thunder. Blast after blast ran into each other. A chorus of cannons.

Fred Barnes reached towards his wife, his expression drawn. “Reckon it’s gunfire?”

Angela put a steadying hand on her husband’s shoulder. “No, Fred. Listen.”

She remembered the thunder. Their son’s thunder.        

It drowned in thousands of shouting voices. 

Andrea pointed up at the sky. “Is that a bird?”

“Nope!” said Bazza. “Looks like a plane.”

It was. What looked like a large, brightly painted passenger-jet was circling low above the studio. How’d they missed that?

There was an all-pervading click. Every radio and stray piece of metal and glass started speaking with a rough, masculine voice. 

“…Jesus, McNoll, you’re free to go—I’m on? Christ—just send him off somewhere!”

Distant thunder, then a forced cough. 

“Good folk of Sydney. It’s me, the Crimson Comet. I’m back.”

Murmurs crested over the crowd.

“Holy shit,” whispered Fred. 

Bazza slapped his mates on the shoulders excitedly. “My bloody uncle served with him.”

“Not the time for name-dropping, Bazza,” said Belinda, not taking her eyes from the studio up the hill. 

None of them could make out anything different up there. Just the crowds wiggling and undulating as one, like colourful ants. A super-organism. 

Angela pointed. “Look!”

Two creatures rose above the protestors. One was an angel in silhouette. The other, a sliver of sunlight shaped like a child. 

The Comet spoke again:  

“You’re all here for your fellow Australians. Your fellow man. And you came in the uniform of my calling. I’m honoured. The people with me are supers. All of them. Tim Valour had them crammed into a pit in the middle of the desert. I’m sure he’d have a dozen and one reasons why: but don’t matter. He threw them in jail for not being like him.  They—we—just want a fair go. To be allowed to be. And we’re going to get it, if it’s the last thing we do. But we don’t want to hurt anyone. We’re not here to hold the country at gunpoint. We need your help. They can’t say no if they know you’re with us. 

What do you say, superheroes? Want to come and pay Tim Valour a visit?”

An explosion of cheers. Applause like hungry flame. 

“Well, let’s get going!”        

Angela looked at Fred. “He has to be with them. He has to.”

The crowd in front of the studio started to bleed from the carpark, draining and narrowing down the road that made its way down the hill into the streets. 

The Barnes and the Northamites rushed onto the middle of the road, the rest of the grazers on the lot following like a cargo-liner behind a tugboat. 

Eddie picked up the beach towel as they left, shoving it into his fiancé’s arms. “Tie this around my neck.”

Belinda smiled bewilderedly. “What?”

“Come one, you were the one telling me to get into the spirit!”

Belinda let out a sighing laugh. “Alright, you big kid.”

She quickly and deftly affixed the towel around Eddie’s neck. 

“Call me… the Electrician.” 

Belinda pecked him on the cheek. “The conquering hero.”

Marching in front of the protesters were about two hundred men, women, and children in bland coveralls. The girl dressed in the sun flew above. A white-headed snake with scales of every colour

Leading the procession was the Crimson Comet, new, angular wings outspread. Beside him was an old red haired woman in a black summer dress. She was holding the hand of a brown-skinned boy dressed in water. To that child’s left was a girl dressed in a thousand comic panels, and what appeared to be a humanoid tiger dressed like country-club Robin. 

And then there was the boy at the end. The one in the starry black cloak and the feathered eye-mask.

If nothing else (and there was so much more) there was no chance of Fred mistaking those eyes. Storm-grey, like his mother. 

God, he looked so much like Angela.   

“…Son?”

The boy in the cloak came to a stop with the rest of his companions. The people behind them tried not to collide with their backs. 

The tiger-boy tapped the one in the cloak on the shoulder, pointing at the legless man and his wife staring at them. 

“They—those are your parents…”

Arnold swallowed. All his dreams and nightmares at once. 

Why here? How here?        

Two words, lost in the storm of the mob. 

There was a flash. 

Arnold stood there in his shorts and t-shirt. 

Bazza waved. “Hey Arn! Good to see you all!”

Arnold broke into a run, leaping at his father’s chest and clinging to the man like a drowning child pulled from the sea. 

“Dad, Mum… I…”

The boy trembled. 

“Shhh,” his father sighed. “You don’t have to… anything.”

Angela wrapped her arms around her husband and son, leaning down to rest her cheek against Arnold’s head.

He nestled. “I—I did some bad things.”

Memories of Lawrence lying in his own blood. Kissing David, for some reason. 

Angela’s grip tightened. “Not now.”

Never again, she told the world. Not a prayer but a demand. Never again.  

The sound of small feet against the road. A high, hoarse voice:

“Mr. and Mrs Barnes?”

The elder Barnes managed to look up from their son. Allison Kinsey was standing in front of them, her costume perfect, gleaming white, blending almost obscenely with her pale skin. Her eyes were burning red. 

Angela couldn’t even begin to question either of those facts. “It’s good to see you two have stuck together, Allie.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it would’ve been not too long ago. To Angela’s shame, she’d imagined the girl leading her son astray since Exhibition Hall. 

“My parents, are they here too?”

Fred shook his head gently. “Afraid not, girl.”

The Barnes had invited the Kinseys along. To their shameful relief, they’d said no.

“Oh.” 

Angela sighed and straightened herself, opening her arms. “It’s alright, Allie. We’ll look after you.”

Allison looked around herself, as though worried her mother and father might suddenly appear. Then she gave Angela a quick, tight hug. 

The crowd from the lot quickly assimilated into the march, taking their place just behind the liberated prisoners from Circle’s End. A few lingered up front to pet and fawn over Billy, who made no attempt to deflect the adoration. 

Belinda scratched the boy behind the ear. “Good God, kid. Do you wash in fabric softener?”

Billy beamed, tail swishing. “All natural, ma’am!”

Bazza even got to shake the Comet’s hand. 

“Never thought I’d meet ya. They say my uncle served with you back in the war.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“Bazza Finch.”

The Crimson Comet blinked. “Bazza? As in, ‘Bartholomew’ Finch?”

“Yes…”

The Comet’s smile grew a touch warmer. “Well, you’ve grown.”

“What—”

Bazza suddenly recalled faint, impressionist recollections of a massive fella who’d hung around in the summer sometimes. He felt very dense. 

And so they marched on, pouring out from Gore Hill into the rest of Sydney as a polychrome river. Arnold sat in his dad’s lap as his mum pushed the chair. Probably a good decision. His shoes had gone with his costume. Allison took to the sky again, leading the way like a low-flying Star of Bethlehem. 

She looked back over the human train behind her, taking in the vast soundscape of their songs. She’d never seen so many people in one place, so close together. All there for one thing. 

I made this happen. Me. 

She felt like a grain of sand with the gravity of suns. 

As little houses and corner-stores gave way to tower-blocks and shopping centres, the march came up to a police barricade. Two dozen uniformed officers pointing guns at them from behind metal walls and their own police cars. 

The lead officer barked, “Stay back! Not all of you are bulletproof!”

The Crimson Comet stepped forward. Nobody fired. 

“True,” he said. “We’re not all bulletproof. But I am.”

Slowly, like the beginning of rain, the cops dropped their rifles and pistols. 

Ralph smiled crookedly. “Good choice, mates.”

He looked up at Allison. “Clear us a path?”

Allison cracked her knuckles. 

Green lightning lashed down, banishing the cars and barricades with a boom.

The police shouted and scattered, only to be engulfed as the march fell upon them. Costumed protestors jeered and slapped the officers on the back as they passed.   

For Ralph, it was as if the ground was shoving blood and adrenaline up through his feet. 

Christ, what if Jan sees this? What if she doesn’t?         

For the first time since he put on that costume again, Ralph Rivers felt like a superhero. He kept walking, right out of the past.      

Cars stopped moving as the march approached, allowing the people to flow around them like water around rocks in the sea. Motorists smacked their dashboards as though that was where the engine lived. 

They should’ve looked up at the plane still flying above the march. 

David tapped the window of a yellow Holden, getting the attention of a curly-haired girl in the backseat. They shared a smile. 

The door-lock hammered down. 

The children both rolled their eyes, before Sarah Allworth pulled David forward.

“Don’t dawdle.”

To the old lady’s quiet amusement, she saw some folks hopping out of their cars and walking with them.

Do they even know what this is about? Does it matter?

She looked up at the sky. 

You proud, son? Are we doing the right thing?

How could they not be?

The march turned a corner, slowly, by degrees. Allison spotted the Sydney Harbour Bridge, arching over the boats and blue water like an ornate coat-hanger.

She sighed even as she smiled. It would’ve been brilliant if they’d gotten to cross the bridge. A great picture in a history book.

But their target lay on this side of the water.

⬗  

After the attack at Royal Exhibition Hall, the DDHA found itself in need of a new headquarters. Again. 

It’d been slim pickings. Melbourne wasn’t keen to offer them more office-space, and Canberra still bore the faint scent of ash. 

They’d settled on Sydney. It was good enough for everything else. Some bright-spark had even suggested the DDHA take over the Parliament of New South Wales for the duration. Not like anyone was using it. Pretty much every government function since the start of Black Summer had been held over the phone or in discrete hotel conference rooms. 

They’d said no, of course. As far as the state government was concerned, putting the DDHA in another parliament building would be tantamount painting a bullseye on it. 

Then, to Tim’s dull, uncaring surprise, they offered them Kirribilli House⁷. 

It made sense. The house was centralized, set up for communication, and it wasn’t as if Menzies and his wife were using it anymore. 

There were other advantages. The view of the harbour was gorgeous. A security nightmare, as had been pointed out to Tim many times, but gorgeous. Anyone with a boat and a decent rifle could shoot you dead in the back-garden. Not that Tim had been overly concerned: he barely found the time to step outside for fag in the fresh air. Besides, water put him on edge lately. Same reason he had avoided the pool. That and memories one winter old…  

Kirribilli House also had creature comforts aplenty, like bedrooms. Went a long way towards making the all-nighters bearable, even if Tim was still sleeping alone. No way he was keeping Val close by. Not after the bombings.

So yes, in terms of digs, Valour’s life had improved considerably. If only the rest of his circumstances had followed that trend. 

This evening—like every evening the last week and a half—he was sitting in the prime minister’s former office, endlessly mulling over the latest clusterfuck with the DOPO attache.  

“I’m telling you Tim, the SLF was a fraud!”

Tim sighed. “What makes you say that?”

James Lyman glared at the DDHA chief. It was pretty much the only way he could look at people. While he had much the same indermininate middle-aged greyness as most military-intelligence men of their rank, he lacked that common stocky solidity. In fact, Tim thought he looked like an angry stick insect with curly hair. 

“Think about it, Tim.” He also had an unfortunate habit of using names in conversation a touch too often. “These names the guards gave us: ‘Garox,’ ‘Hyper-Hippie,’ ‘Evolvulon.’ Have you ever heard of these guys?”

“No,” admitted Tim. “But that doesn’t prove anything. They are more supers alive now than ever. Maybe they’re just… new.” 

Valour winced as Lyman spat a wad of nicotine gum into a handkerchief. Couldn’t he smoke like a normal fella? Or at least let them set up a spitoon. It put Tim uncomfortably in mind of consumptives. 

“Not a single familiar name? Unlikely. Supervillains are loners at heart. They don’t band together unless they’re desperate or very impressed with each other. The idea that a bunch of freshmen villains trusting each other enough to pull a stunt like Circle’s End? Just to rescue a bunch of other villains? Ridiculous.”

“But we do have familiar faces,” countered Tim. “Allison Kinsey and Arnold Barnes.”

Tim wished he hadn’t mentioned the children. They made him feel like a bastard. An incompetent bastard. 

He added, “Not to mention Mistress Quickly.”

Valour still wondered about that. Had Lawrence’s children already replaced him?

“That’s an oddity too. Quickly is a definite loner. Also hasn’t been active for a year. As for the children… there’s a certain childishness to the idea, isn’t there? The Supervillain Liberation Front, who want everyone in the world to be supervillains, too. What criminals want more competition?”

Tim had to admit, the attache had a point. 

But he didn’t. 

“You know, that Garox said he was an alien. Maybe they all are? Or most of them, anyway. Would explain why we haven’t heard about him, at least.”

Lyman scoffed. “Tim, do you know how unlikely it is that the rest of the Solar System hosts intelligent life?”

“There’s the Gatehouse.”

The attache leaned over the desk. “Yes there is the Gatehouse, Tim. Don’t you think they would have told us if there was an alien king running around?”

“The Gatehouse doesn’t tell us much of anything.” Tim resisted the urge to remind James of their mutual Physicians. “Besides, where does the Crimson Comet fit into this?”

“Simple. He was in on it.” 

Tim clenched his fists behind the desk. He supposed he couldn’t blame Lyman for paranoia. Reaping and sowing it was his job. The man had been with the OSS back in the war. All blowup tanks and forged intel left on dead men in the sea. These days, they said he had dead Viet Cong drained and strung up near encampments like vampire victims⁸. Brilliant, stupid schemes were what he was wired for.

But he didn’t know Ralph Rivers. Hadn’t had his life saved by him more than he had fingers. 

“The Crimson Comet is solid, Lyman.”

But then, Valour had known Herbert, too.

Lyman shrugged. “We thought Penderghast was solid.” Maybe not solid enough for some of the more… domestic uses for a sorcerer, but solid. “Nobody knows where the hell he’s been. And at the end of the day, Tim, the Crimson Comet is a super.”

That was one thing Valour had to say for the attache. He didn’t call them bloody ‘sorcerers.’

“It’s perfectly plausible he’d side with other supers”

He was right, Tim realized. Why would he expect Ralph to be alright with a boot on his lot’s necks? Why did he still think he was the good guy?

There was a dull, rising roar. 

For some reason, Lyman sniffed. “Is it raining or something?”

Valour’s secretary swung the office door open. She looked breathless:

“Sir, there’s something you should—”

Windchimes. The walls became transparent. Every single one in Kirribilli House. Electrical wires and telephone cables lay suspended in glassy brick and plaster, as if Henry Gray had gone into architecture. 

Everyone in the office looked through the walls at the front courtyard. It was crowded with a mix of people in white coveralls and knocked together pantomime costumes. Knocked together, that was, except the man with the metal wings and the children clustered around them.

Valour of course, recognized them all.

“Shit,” said Lyman, surprisingly evenly. 

Tim staggered and gripped his desk for support as three voices sounded as one in his head:

“Timothy Valour. Come out and speak to us. Alone.” 

Before Valour could take a breath, a lone voice spoke. Allison Kinsey’s:

“Oh, and Mr. Thumps.”

Timothy collected himself. “Right. Had to happen eventually.”

Against Lyman’s advice, Tim and his manservant left the see-through house to face the mob. The sight of him inspired the crowd to launch into another round of “No Valour!”

He ignored the jeers and shouts, looking darkly at the Crimson Comet. “Hello Ralph. You could’ve called ahead.”

Ralph made a pained expression. “Jesus, Tim. Secret identity, mate.”

“You know just how many Ralphs I know?” He looked at Allison standing next to the superhero. 

“Who’s in charge in there? Alberto back for another round?”

“Nope,” said Allison. “But he is laughing right now.”

Without any prompting, Mr. Thumps walked over to the little girl. Gently taking her hand, he said, “Miss Kinsey, what I did to you at the Exhibition Hall…” He lowered his mask of a face. It was the closest thing to an expression that came to him. “Please forgive me. I couldn’t—”

Allison shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault, Thumps. Besides, you saved my life.”

“I did?”

“Sorta. Whatever you did, it was just as good.”

Allison watched the lights behind Thumps’ face grow lilac with relief. She wondered if he could tag along when it was all sorted out. 

Valour was eyeing the ex-prisoners warily. The fact many of them were eyeing him back hungrily didn’t reassure him. 

He looked back at Ralph. “You do know half these people are criminals, right?”

Ralph nodded. “What does it matter? It’s illegal for them to walk around in the light right now. I’m a superhero, Tim not a policeman. Me and the law are only on nodding terms.”

Valour pointed a little desperately at Arnold Barnes, still sitting in his father’s lap. “He’s killed a man, you know. And he’s not the only one!”

Arnold went pale. His father wrapped his arms around him.

“We both know what Lawrence did to them, Valour.”

Tim exhaled. What was the point? There were thousands at his gates. Hundreds of them high-supers. They were seconds away from a riot. A superpowered riot. 

He caught sight of the painted plane hovering above Kirribilli House. He recognized it from some briefings. Probably not a good sign either.

This was a surrender.

“What do they want?”

Why was he still talking like Ralph wasn’t one of them?

Ralph jabbed a thumb towards David and Mrs Allworth. “Well, Davey here still wants you to explode. But we talked him out of it.”

Valour caught sight of David glaring at him with his moon-sea eyes. 

Fair cop, I suppose.

The Comet laid a hand on Allison’s shoulder. “Might want to ask this one here. She got the ball rolling.”

“Alright then. What are your demands?”

Allison remembered something from the Bible. Well, something in a film, from the Bible. 

She stepped forward and grinned, spreading her arms. “Let my people go.”

It was nearly impossible for a hush to fall over a crowd of that size and energy, but for Valour, its roar did grow more distant. 

He took a breath. “I see.” 

He turned and started back towards Kirribilli House. He looked over his shoulder. “Well, are you going to come and witness this? Ensure compliance?” 

Ralph and Allison shared a look, but soon followed the DDHA chief.

One advantage to Kirribilli House’s sudden translucency was that at least nobody was surprised when Valour walked in with the Crimson Comet and a very small wanted terrorist. 

Staff members shouted questions. Tim ignored them. 

James Lyman tried to block his path. “Valour! The hell are you doing? We do not negotiate with terrorists!”

“I’m not negotiating, I’m capitulating.”  

There was an odd freedom to it. He had no choice but to do the right thing. No compromises or politicking. If he didn’t free these people, Sydney would probably be on fire by nightfall. 

And nobody remembered the Pharaoh fondly. 

He found his secretary. 

“Marie, I want you to get on the phone, and get the word out. Emergency order: every demi-human asylum and containment facility is to be abandoned, effective immediately.”

“But sir, what about—”

Marie’s eyes darted to the Crimson Comet and the pale girl.

“The inmates are to be left alone. Completely alone.”

“…Okay.”

Allison and Ralph Rivers watched as the young woman made the call; as mechanically as the computers that would one day replace many of her kind.

Marie lay the phone down on its receiver. “It’ll take a couple of hours for everyone to get the message… I think.”

She winced like she expected the Comet to strike her.

Instead, he gave the woman a small salute. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Marie nodded and smiled queasily. 

Valour pulled a dotted map of Australia down from a chalkboard, rolling it up and handing it to Allison. It was half a head taller than her.

“They’re all marked on there.”

Soon Ralph and Allison were out the front doors again, the latter amusing herself by waving the map behind her like a cape.

Valour followed close behind.

“It’s done,” he told the crowd. “Go get your people.”

Arnold was back on his feet and in costume. Work clothes. “Alright people!” he said, voice amplified by a small metallic patch on his throat. “Orderly lines!”

It took him and Allison a little under ten minutes to whisk away all the supers. All that was left were themselves and the Barnes.

“You sure you’re fine with this?” Arnold asked. 

“We trust you, son,” said Angela, laying across her husband with her arms around his neck.

Fred nodded vigorously. “Been wanting to try this for ages!”

Arnold smiled and pointed. “Three… two…”

Angela looked back out at the crowd. “God bless you all.”

“One!”

Lightning lashed, sending Fred and Angela away. 

Arnold and Allison took each other’s hands. 

“Want to come with us?” Allison asked Mr. Thumps. 

The drone shook his head with slow graveness. “I have to look after Mr. Valour and Val.”

“Okay. Hope you can visit sometime.”

“This isn’t the end, you know,” said Tim. “I’m sorry, but you’re not making peace here. You’re just robbing us.”

“We know,” said Allison. “Still, better than where we were.”

The children turned to face the part-time superheroes of Sydney. They waved with their free hands.

“Bye!”

A lime brightness, and the supers were all gone.

Tim regarded the costumed tide of people lapping at the courtyard.

“Well, what are you still here for?”

Timothy Valour still slept alone that night. But at least he slept easy. His PSA was never reaired. It was made for a different world.

⬖

Allison Kinsey stood at the gates of McClare’s Demi-Human Asylum, her people at her back and standing before her, their collective songs colliding together like two stormfronts. 

The asylum inmates were shouting for release. As Allison remembered, most of them were children. The sun had set and taken the last dregs of daylight with it, but she glowed like the daughter of the moon and sun. 

She called behind her, “I’m taking requests for this one.”

“I can turn metal to sugar!”

“I can turn gravity off!”

The man they called Fo-Fum (still walking with a cane and a limp) shouted, “Use my power, kid! You get to be a giant!”

That sounded fun.

Bassoon. 

Allison’s presence expanded beyond the borders of her body. She clenched fists the size of cars. She could see herself standing twenty feet below her.

The metal walls and gates wrenched themselves out of the ground, hurtling far into the night.

The two crowds merged, before falling upon the asylum in a storm of exultant destruction. 

The supers spent hours tearing that place apart. All throughout, Allison wondered what she would call her town⁹. 

Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter

---

^{1. A term often hurled at the Department of Pyschonautics and Occultism due to their insistence on a purely magical theoretical framework for superpowers. That and some unfortunate early recruitment posters featuring the likeness of Vincent Price. ↩}

^{2. An Australian grassroots movement largely consisting of middle-aged, middle-class women whose sons were old enough to be called up for National Service during the Vietnam War. The group is often seen as representative of a shift in public perception of the war, with opposition no longer limited to the youth and counterculture, but also the “respectable” middle-classes. However, at the time, members of Save Our Sons were often pilloried by the media as hysterical, naive mothers, or “bimbos.” ↩}

^{3. An international pacifist movement heavily involved in the Australian “Vietnam Moratoriums.” ↩}

^{4. A club turned protest group formed by students in Sydney University’s superhuman studies program. ↩}

^{5. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Flying Man’s approval ratings—such as they were—rose considerably after his disappearance. ↩}

^{6. A slur usually referring to people of Vietnamese extraction. ↩}

^{7. The official Sydney residence of the Prime Minister of Australia until early 1966. One might ask why the prime minister needs a residence in Sydney when the national capital is Canberra, but you could also ask why they’re paid more than people who have to work with sewage for a living. ↩}

^{8. Occult consultants had ruled out fielding actual vampires. ↩}

^{9. She settled on Catalpa. ↩}

Thunder rolled over the desert dunes as the Crimson Comet was thrown down onto the sand. 

The shadow of Garox, King of Saturn, fell over Ralph Rivers. 

“Surrender, Comet!” boomed the alien. “The day of good and righteousness is done! Now is our time!”

Ralph rolled his eyes. Laying it on a bit thick, Mabel.

The superhero rose back to his feet like he bore an iron crucifix on his shoulders, making sure to take in deep, heavy breaths even as he shouted, “Not bloody likely, Garox! My boys won’t buckle!”

Cheering rang throughout the battlefield, intermixed with roars from the Physician drones. 

Ralph resisted the urge to check his watch. They had to have been fighting for at least an hour. The perfect white disc of the sun was starting to slowly climb down across the empty sky, dulling the yellow sands below. Ralph and Garox had already exchanged three monologues about the struggle between good and evil. The SLF was down to less than twenty members. 

One of the guards had managed to wrench the WAR Correspondent’s camera off him, annihilating villains and the landscape behind them with flash after flash like the world’s worst tourist. “You tell ‘em, Comet!” 

The guard’s comrades had formed a circle around the camera’s owner, beating and kicking him the way Ralph’s old bullies used to. 

The Crimson Comet winced. Prison guards and their ilk always made him uneasy. Partly it was things he’d seen in the war, partly suspicion about what drew blokes into that kind of life. There but for the grace of God went he… 

A splash of paint smacked into the side of Ralph’s head. His vision shattered into bright glassy shards and reassembled into lurid, fractal kaleidoscopes. 

Jagged acid rock blared in his ears, a slow voice droning, “Throw off your chains, man. Become Adam again, free in the garden…”

A shot broke through the psychedelia. Ralph found himself trapped in a gooey metallic headlock by the Thing from Venus. Garox was still stood in front of the superhero, but his gaze was turned in horror towards a tye-dyed hippie lying dead in the sand, rainbow paint leaking from a hole in his forehead. 

Garox glared back at Ralph. “Hyper-Hippie will be avenged.”

Ralph groaned.

For fuck’s sake, Mabel.

The Thing from Venus shoved Ralph towards Garox, who knocked down and pinned the superhero under his armoured bulk. 

“This is where your kind belongs, hero! In the dirt!”

The Crimson Comet roared back, “If it’s Aussie dirt, I’ll take it!”

Ralph silently thanked Mabel. He could just lie there and squirm for five minutes if he milked this right.  

Shouts hit Ralph and Garox from all sides. Bullets pinged off the both of them. 

Ralph supposed he should be grateful for the support, though he wondered what the guards would be doing if he weren’t invulnerable.   

He took the opportunity to survey the battlefield. Evolvulon was dead—his great brain splattered across the sand like burst watermelon. The lady astronaut had been gunned down with nary more than a resigned sigh. A human shipwreck, the mechanical Major Malfunction, lay in a pool of oil, shining like blood in the desert sun as it oozed from the tubes and wires spilling from his open midsection.

Ralph would’ve thought Mabel needed to see a shrink, if one hadn’t raised her to begin with. 

One of the Physician’s combat drones stomped over and yanked Garox off Ralph, much to his disappointment. He was enjoying the break.

The drone pulled the villain off his feet up towards his visor and growled, “Surrender!”

The creature’s arms were trembling. Garox knew the answer it was was looking for:

“Never!”

Garox drove his gauntleted fist into the drone’s chest. Blood erupted around his wrist. 

The drone shuddered, dropping the alien king. He landed on his feet.

Ralph was getting to his feet, too. 

“Suppose that was a mercy,” he muttered under his breath. “Poor devils.”

There was a noise. Not an uncommon one by any means, but not one often heard. It was the sound of a soap bubble popping, magnified a thousand fold.

Ralph shut his eyes.

A wave of wind and sand blasted over the fighters. When Ralph opened his eyes again, men were coughing and clutching at their eyes.

Finally, one man said, “…What happened to the jail?”

The dust and sand settled. In the distance, you could hear the sound of earth and rock tumbling down a new cliff-face.   

Ralph looked towards Circle’s End Supermax. All that lay beyond the security fence was heat-shimmered air.

He suppressed an urge to hoot. 

They did it. They actually fucking did it.

All at once, the surviving villains broke out in laughter.

Garox let out the hoarse cackle of a long-time smoker. “You fell for it! You all bloody fell—” He cleared his throat and continued. “Foolish Earth-clingers, your attempts to keep us from our prize were in vain! While you struggled against the weakest of our forces, my allies spirited away your flimsy prison to my fortress on Titan, great moon of Saturn! Now, our program of villainy may truly begin!” 

Garox threw his hand to the sky. “Supervillain Liberation Front, away!”

Garox vanished, along with the rest of the SLF, corpses and all.  

“Jesus Christ!” a guard shouted. “Fuckers stole the jail!”

“What about the guys we left back there?”

Ralph dusted himself off and shook his head gravely. “Gone too, I’d expect.” He raised  “I should’ve known this is what they were planning.” He looked around at the guards with counterfeit solemnity. “I brought them to your doorstep. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Comet!” someone insisted. “You can’t tell what these freaks have up their sleeves!”

Smooth. 

“What do we do now?”

The Crimson Comet turned away from the crowd and started walking towards the shadow of Circle’s End. “I get back on the trail. You fellas rest up and get word out to the freak-finders.” Ralph suppressed a grimace. “It’s all I can ask of you.”

Protests.  

Ralph looked back over his shoulder. “Trust me, you’ve done enough.”

The Crimson Comet became a streak of red-gold light, trailing off towards the horizon, leaving the remaining guards of Circle’s End Supermax behind.

Questions without answers. Haltering conversations miscarrying in the desert heat. Angry, frightened curses upon all super-kind—with the rare, unspoken exception of good blokes like the Comet. The hysterical, chemical stillness of the Physician’s sons. 

“…Bugger this!” shouted one guard. 

His fellows turned towards him in ripples. 

The man glanced around at the other men. “The Crimson Comet’s the only reason we’re not stuck on fucking Jupiter or wherever! And we’re gonna let him chase after these maniacs on his own?”

A rumble of offense like an earthquake. 

“I say we help a mate out! Who’s with me?”

Cheering broke out amongst the crowd. No doubt Ralph would’ve been inspired, if it weren’t so bloody annoying.

⬗      

Mabel leaned back against the tree and shut her drawing book, deeply satisfied. 

She’d done good, Mabel thought. Her and Dad. 

“Did we do it?” asked Mrs Allworth.

“Yep,” said Mabel, smiling. “Prison’s all gone. Saw it through like, a dozen sets of eyeballs. Few  robot sensors, same thing really.”

Sarah looked off into the middle distance, blinking at lights that were not there. “Good Lord…”

Mabel looked up at the old woman. “You alright, Mrs Allworth?”

Sarah shook herself. “Yes Mabel, I’m fine. I just—I never saw myself stealing a prison. A whole building, like it was a magazine or a bottle of whiskey! I never even took grapes from the grocery store. Seems more like something my Joe would’ve done…” A chuckle. “I should track down the boy who always tried sneaking chocolates from our store. Show him a real thief.” Sarah pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Not that I had much to do with it. It was you and Mr. Rivers and Miss Quickly and your friends who pulled this off.”

“Aww, don’t say that. You helped us find Mistress Quickly!”

“That was Blancheflor, if you’ll recall.”’

“But you made him help. We’d probably have had to pick apart his big computer brain if you hadn’t.”    

Sarah smiled and patted Mabel’s hand. “Very kind of you to say, child.” Mrs Allworth’s face grew stern as she glanced around the derelict mainstreet. “Where’s that boy gotten to?”

Mist spiraled down from the sky in front of the pair, solidifying into David bouncing on his heels—still in his costume for once. He beamed at Mabel. “That was amazing!”

He ran over and pulled his friend up by her hands, jumping up and down and trilling, “There was explosions and punches and lasers and you beat up so many dumb humans!” 

“Hope we get to do it again. Got even more villains drawn up I couldn’t fit in.”

Mrs Allworth frowned. “Never hope for more fighting, Mabel. And where were you during all this, David?”

“Watching Mabel’s baddies, duh!”

“Don’t ‘duh’ me, boy! You were supposed to be guarding her with me.”

David scoffed. “I coulda exploded anyone who got close.”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“But I could!” David looked Mabel right in the eye, stating plainly, “You are the most amazing girl I have ever met.”

Mabel grinned. “I know.”

The Crimson Comet came to a skidding stop at the top of the street, bridging the gap between him and the others at a normal run. “Right! Time to go!”

“Did they buy Da—Garox’s story?” asked Mabel.

“I think so?” replied Ralph. He glanced over his shoulder. “Thing is, now they’re following me.”

“What, why?” asked David.

“Didn’t exactly stop to ask them,” said Ralph. “I’m guessing they’re like a bunch of lost baby ducks.”    

The desert quiet was dissolving. A drumroll of trundling engines and distant shouting. 

“Icarus.”

Ralph’s wings folded onto his back. He hoisted up Mabel in a bridal carrying, making the girl yelp in surprise. 

“How strong are your arms?” he asked Mrs Allworth.

She hummed dubiously. “…Strong enough.”

The Crimson Comet thundered across the desert, trampling the ground underfoot with the power of a one-man elephant stampede and throwing up a wall of dust and sand behind him. 

In his arms, Mabel cheered. “Whoo!”

“How are we doing, Mrs Allworth?” Ralph asked over the roar of the wind.

He felt the lady’s arms tighten around his neck.

“Remembering why I didn’t let Joe take me flying, thanks!”

David flew alongside the human juggernaut, his body phantasmic mist. Looking back, he felt very silly for not realizing how easy it was to fly. Thinking like a human instead of what he was, he guessed.

Soon, Mistress Quickly’s mobile bunker came into view, rushing towards them as Ralph’s charge picked up speed.

David warbled, “Hey, wasn’t the door supposed to be open for us?” 

Ralph squinted. Maude said the plane would be left ready for them to board. But the stairs were retracted, the cabin door shut.

The Crimson Comet came to a stop as hard as if he’d hit a wall.

Sarah’s grip faltered.  “Oof! Bit of warning next time?”

“You can get down now, ma’am,” Ralph said evenly.

Sarah let go. Ralph set Mabel on her feet. 

“What’s going on?” asked the girl.

“I’m not sure.”

Ralph started walking slowly towards the plane. 

A blast of lightning sent the superhero leaping backwards.

Microphone feedback. A little boy’s voice:

“Stay back! I’m warning you!”

Ralph shook his head. “What the—”

Mabel groaned. “Allison said they might be putting some kids in the plane. One of them must’ve woken up and started playing with the buttons.”

Ralph looked behind him. Tiny, shadowed men and trucks crawling towards them like growing army ants. He was suddenly reminded that this was a plan thought up by a nine year old.

“Boy,” Mrs Allworth shouted, “we’re not going to hurt you! We’re here to help!”

“Shut up! I’ve been pounced on, knocked, and now you’ve shoved me on some weird plane! Just leave me alone!”

A bullet whistled past the group.

“Daedalus!”  

Ralph pulled Sarah and Mabel into his chest as his wings unfolded. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

“Language!”

“Not the time, ma’am!”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said David, still misty. “I’ll sort him out.”

He flew towards the plane, dispersing till he seemed one with the thin air.

Ralph grit his teeth. “Any idea what he means by ‘sort him out’, Mabel?”

“…No.”

It wasn’t easy for David to seep into the bunker cabin. The plane was meant to go into space when Mistress Quickly wanted. But nothing is completely airtight.

He coalesced into ice behind the child plucking away the pilot’s console. 

His molecules vibrated, “Hey, kid.”

The boy swung around and shot at David, blasting away his shoulder with a stolen raygun.

David glanced at the wound as new water flowed over it and froze. “Not gonna work, mate.”

Doc Danny whimpered. He clutched his gun with both shaking hands and fired again, hitting David in the chest. 

David’s neck cracked and creaked as he looked down at the bevelled hole blown through him. A sigh like wind over ice fields. 

His body melted all at once, the water evaporating before it could hit the ground. The cloud drew up and around Doc Danny, plunging the young super-scientist into David’s cold glass-harp voice:

“Stop being a git and give us back our plane!”

Doc Danny squeaked, flailing and swiping at the mist. 

Easiest thing would be to kill him. David seriously considered it. Wouldn’t be hard. Just scramble his brains…

That was what Grandfather would do. Without a question. But doing things the granddad way wasn’t making him happy anymore. And Mabel would be mad at him. Right when they were having fun together again—  

Who cared? This kid was putting Mabel in danger. His Mabel. Screw him!

The mist swirled around Danny faster. Tiny flecks of ice bit at his skin.

She didn’t have to know. David could liquify his flesh and stash his bones on the plane somewhere. He could tell everyone he teleported away. That was something people did, sometimes… 

David felt hot, angry tears leak from Doc Danny’s eyes. The boy screamed, “Piss off! I’m sick of it! I did what everyone told me, because they said I wasn’t a real super! That I should be on their side! Then they say I am a super and throw me in jail to get beat up by the rest of them. Then I try to help them, and they never-never me wherever without asking! What am I supposed to do?”

David’s mist slowed. The ice-shard melted. He condensed into boy-shape again, this time flesh and blood. 

Doc Danny panted, but didn’t raise the gun again. 

“You’re from the prison, right?”

“I just said that!”

David pointed a finger at one of the security monitors hanging above the controls. “Well, the guards are coming to get us.”

Doc Danny swung around to look at the screen. The remnants of the Supermax guards were indeed gaining fast, a phalanx of black trucks ahead of a line of men and drones. 

The boy growled, his freckles bunching together into leopard-spots. “Like hell.” 

He stabbed at a few buttons.

Outside, Ralph Rivers looked up to see a large black projectile arcing from the plane over his head.  

The thing landed a few paces ahead of the guards, before exploding into a baby-blue mushroom cloud.

Screams echoed over the desert, but not quite of pain. 

David looked over Doc Danny’s shoulder at the last button he pressed.

“Mozzie gas.” He squinted at the other boy. “You hit them with bug-spray?”

Doc Danny grinned sharply. “Nope. It’s gas that itches like mozzie bites.”  

David laughed and slapped Danny on the back. “Okay, you’re fun. Mind letting my friends in before the idiots stop scratching their arses?”

“…Sure.”

In less than a minute, Ralph, Sarah, and Mabel were clambering up the bunker’s retractable stairs. David and Danny were standing in the middle of the cabin.

Doc Danny rubbed his arm, eyes turned down towards his feet. “Sorry for locking you out.”

“Yeah, yeah, we forgive you.” Ralph turned his eyes up towards the ceiling. “Auto-pilot, get us to rendezvous alpha, stat!”

An inauthentically placid impression of Maude’s voice said, “Crimson Comet voice-print acknowledged. Please take a seat.”

The antigravity strips under the plane’s wings lit up, buoying up the mobile bunker on a cloud of virtual particles before its jets launched it into the empty sky.

From a white leather chair next to one of the windows, Mabel watched Circle’s End disappear for the last time. She smiled at the site of the deep, wide pit where the Supermax had been.

Mabel Henderson was a lot like her father. Today, they were both miners.

⬖

Circle’s End Supermax did not appear on Titan. Instead, it re-entered real-space amongst vast tree-dotted grass plains near the Northern Territory coast, still bright green from the last wet-reason, the air spiced with the faintest suggestion of sea-salt. Just as Maude Simmons had projected, the whole complex loomed over the landscape like a new Leaning Tower, its formerly buried heights now exposed to the sky. 

Clearing out the guards and staff wasn’t hard. Arnold and his new personal guard rose through the complex, scattering resisters to the winds.

One of the canteen cooks charged at the teleporter with a ladle, screaming, “You’re not getting—”

A green flash. The man was gone. 

“Where’d you send him?” asked Andrea, mentally keeping tally. 

Arnold grunted. “Peru.”

Meanwhile, Allison and Maude came across a long, dark chamber, its walls lined with riveted steel coffins with poison-green windows. Songs radiated from each one—tightly ordered notes of pure rage.

Drone storage.

“So, what do we do with them?” asked Allison. “They’re sorta people.”

“Dangerous people,” elaborated Maude.

“Still, killing them might be murder, I think?”

Maude nodded. “Not the image we want right now.” She made a pinching gesture. “Put a cork in it, I think?”

“Agreed.”

They kept Frances McNoll. They had plans for him. Besides, he helped Maude decide who to let out of their cells.

“Harold Franks, no alias recorded. What’d he do?”

McNoll sighed in his chair. “He resisted confinement at Roberts.”

“Right then.” Maude checked Harold’s name on her list. “Vera West, alias Cyclone Sigma.”

“Grand larceny and assaulting a police officer.”

Maude laughed. “Amateur hour.” Check. “Name unknown, alias Ixchel. Bit of an outside reference, I respect that, but what about their resume?”

“Building without a permit.”

A scoff. 

“The building was made out of cats.”

“…Scratch that.”

Just as she said, Thunder-Tiger’s parents were both there. 

“Mum! Dad!”

The little girl ran into the supervillains’ waiting arms, forming a kind of human sandwich.

Her father tried to hold back tears by focusing on Billy and Allison watching from the side. “Told ya, Thunder, in company we’re…”

His girlfriend let out a choked laugh. “Oh, shut up, John.”

Both Billy and Allison tried not to look directly at the scene. It hurt too much.

“So,” Maude said to her latest release. “You were a superhero?”

“Yep,” answered the thin young man. “The Neon Ghost. Was chasing up leads for a book when I got dunked in some concoction… they don’t have our gear here, do they?”

Maude gave the Ghost a flat look. “We both know they don’t. They’re not that stupid.”

The Ghost sighed like one of his namesakes. “Yeah. I just really liked that trenchcoat…”

All in all, they only left ten prisoners in their cells. Soon, everyone who could fly or swallow their fear of heights enough for one of the former to ferry them down was gathered in the shadow of the new tower.

Tom, surprisingly, didn’t need Allie’s help down. He simply turned transparent and walked down through the air like it was a spiral staircase. 

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Billy commented when he reached the ground. 

“Sure I can,” replied Tom. “I’d fall through the floor otherwise.”

Louise jumped down next to the boys and pointed to the sky. “Plane’s coming!”

Mistress Quickly’s mobile bunker descended onto the grass vertically, no runway needed. Ralph Rivers and his companions quickly disembarked and approached the crowd.

The sight of the Crimson Comet drew cheers from most of the prisoners, quickly silenced by glares from the supervillains amongst them. 

Ralph swallowed. He hoped to God he could sell this to them. 

An older man gently cleaved from the throng of people. Even in his off-white prison coveralls, he carried himself with a patrician stride. The wrinkles of his face and his handlebar moustache gave him the air of a graceful, intellectual walrus. 

Ralph smiled crookedly when he recognized the man. “Close-Cut. I didn’t think we’d be seeing each other again.”  

“Nor did I, Comet. The young lady and the children tell me you helped them spirit us away somehow.”

The Crimson Comet nodded. “A bit, yes.”

“Why would you help a prison break? You don’t exactly bat for our team.”

“This place was a concentration camp. I’m a superhero, helping folks is my job. No matter who.”

Close-Cut raised an eyebrow. “Even us criminals?”

“You knocked over a few banks and a fabric store. They’re locking up kids. Who cares?”

The supervillain nodded. “What happens now?”

Ralph took a breath. “We crack open every stinking one of these prisons. Carve out a place where kids like us can be safe. If you and yours want to help.

Murmurs and distant bird-calls.

The two men shook hands.

Previous Chapter                                                                                                            Next Chapter

Mistress Quickly landed in soft darkness:

A slide? Who built this place? A kid?

The shadows shifted with a whir. The chute retracting, Maude guessed. The furry mass clinging to her tightened its grip.

Maude gave it a pat. “Good boy.”

Sterile white-blue light bloomed under her. She was lying on a raised mattress in the middle of a small dome made of tightly wound cogs and gears. Maude had expected that. 

What she hadn’t expected was for the entire cell floor to be a TV screen. Warden McNoll was sitting behind a black desk in front of a grey brick wall, staring up at the ceiling like Big Brother’s confused cousin. 

That’s considerate, thought Maude. Letting the inmates walk all over your face.

Warden McNoll’s upper lip bulged as he licked his teeth, clearly trying to remember his line.  After a second, he blurted, “You have been sentenced to this facility for crimes against the Commonwealth of Australia.”

“Technically,” Mistress Quickly said aloud, “I wasn’t sentenced at all. Haven’t even had a trial yet…”

Well, there were all the absentee ones. Maybe righteous indignation wasn’t her calling.

“This modular holding environment—”

“This cell, you mean.”

Why was she talking to a recording?

“…Will be your home until you have been deemed fit to reenter decent, human society, or a way is found for you to serve said society.”

“No points for guessing which comes first…” 

“As a low-powered, low-risk inmate—”

“Piss off!”

“…You are entitled by law to one hour of supervised, outdoor exercise each week. This is currently being appealed.”

Offense subsided, Maude wondered if they stitched different bits of video together, or if McNoll had to record a message for every little variation.

McNoll kept reciting, “You will receive three meals a day, as is also mandated by Australian law.” His right eye twitched. “Paid for by us, the taxpayer, because you f—”

The video skipped. Now McNoll was holding his hands together in front of him. “To continue, your prison issued furniture also functions as a toilet…”

Definitely the latter.    

The warden droned on about meal times for a while, before the floor turned dark again and the cell was filled with warm, even light. Mistress Quickly was alone, more or less.

Maude got up from the bed and ran her hand over the walls. Normally, spider threads of inspiration would be binding stray information and spontaneous insights into plans as solid as a finished product. Her fingers would twitch, hungry for materials to work into miracles. With this collar clinging to her throat, though, all Maude could’ve told you about this cell was that it looked like a bird’s nest made out of a clock, the floor talked, and it wasn’t at all dark despite a dearth of light fixtures. For her, it was like looking at a man’s face and not being able to tell if he had a nose.

So this is what being normal is like. Don’t like it. 

Could be worse, Maude told herself. Despite far too long spent staring at pictures of her brain and batteries of tests besides, Maude couldn’t shake the fear that suppressing her powers would render her… as she’d been. Before she became Mistress Quickly¹. 

Unless it had. Looking around this cell was hardly any different from struggling through Dick and Jane readers at fourteen, trying to make sense of symbols and scratchings everyone else her age had found so self-explanatory. Maude had gone from “slow” to “impossible.” What did she know about normal? 

To her shame, Maude rushed over to an alcove in the wall housing a dozen, probably heavily vetted volumes. She blindly snatched up a copy of Of Mice and Men and flicked through it:

She could still read. Good.

Maude sighed in relief, slid down the wall, and waited. This whole plan was scraping her nerves like a violin bow. So much of it—so much of her future—now rested on the actions of others. Why had she agreed to it? Loyalty to her people? She was barely on the same continent as most supers, and patriotism was never Maude’s strongest instinct. Concern for the inmates? Maude was no altruist. Besides, the place was full of superheroes. Villains, too; but for all the drinks Mistress Quickly had shared with folks like Jimmy the Bastard or Close Fit², supervillainy was no fraternity. 

It was the booty, Maude told herself. So much technology, some of it literally out of this world… but then, Maude had access to the multiverse. If she tried hard enough, she could’ve found a timeline where this facility had already been abandoned. 

Maude found herself remembering the Cuban Crisis. She’d just finished packing her bags for the Miracle Constellation³ when she’d heard the tapping at the window. At thirty-five thousand feet.

She agreed to help that curly haired bastard before he even offered her anything. God, she was a sucker sometimes. Maybe she hadn’t changed… 

After somewhere between forty-five minutes and forty-five years, Billy appeared in his super-suit on the bed, Mistress Quicky’s battle-suit tied around his waist. He was looking at a watch with a cat-shaped face. “It’s time, Miss Quickly!”

Maude shot up. “Oh, thank you more than Christ.” She held out her hands. “Toss me the suit.”

She slipped the costume on and pulled the mask down over her face. She nearly started as the communicator built into the neck snapped to life. Then, her own voice started talking through it.

“Now, Maude,” said the recording, its voice loud, slow, and forcibly cheerful. “I know you might be frightened, but I need you to do exactly what I say, alright? There’s people who need your help out there. Now, put your hand into the belt-pocket with the apple sticker on it and say ‘ballistic spray.’ That’s ‘bah-lis-tick spray.’ It’ll give you a little spray-can, like bug repellent. Spray it on the kitten-boy—”

She muted the recording. 

“You’re a bitch, Maude,” she told herself flatly. 

“Kitten boy?”

“You know it’s apt, kid.” 

Maude retrieved the “bah-lis-tick spray” and advanced towards Billy. “Alright, costume off for a second, got to bulletproof you.”

Billy crossed his arms. “Do you have to?”

For that, he caught a glob of ballistic foam in the face.

Maude shook the can. “Billy, you’re a living stuffed animal. They’d burn me at the stake if I let you get shot. Now stop whinging. Everyone should be busy gawking at the SLF, but I give us three minutes before someone glances at our camera. Now, one of us is spraying you, and I know which one we’d both rather that be.”

Billy sighed and took the spray. “Costume off.”

Soon he was covered in a layer of thick grey foam like he’d just gotten out of a concrete bubble bath. “My fur’s all sticky! And it makes my costume squelch!”

“Tough.” Maude stuck her hand into another pouch. “Gyges.” 

A ring jumped into her hand. She slipped it onto Billy’s clawed finger. The air around him shone and glinted.

“What’s this?”

“I used to get really cross at people for calling it a forcefield ring, because it’s not technically forcefields, but I can’t remember how it’s not right now, so fuck it, it’s a forcefield ring.”

Come to think of it, how did she fit all that into a ring?

“Then why do I need the spray? And don’t swear!”

“Redundancy!” Maude looked around the cell, asking herself, “How do we get out of here? Vapourized time? Forcefield pliers?”

Billy cleared his throat. “Can I try?”

Maude hummed consideringly. “You aren’t going to try roaring in here, are you?”

“No…”

“Go ahead.”

Billy raised his arms over his head. Silvery mist flowed up from his palms, spreading over the dome walls down to the floor. The mist swelled.

Billy smiled to himself.

The dome collapsed into confetti over their heads, letting in blaring klaxons like the world’s worst party-horns. 

Breakout from Juvenile Rehabilitation Area… Breakout from Juvenile Rehabilitation Area.

Billy clapped his hands over his ears. Mistress Quickly’s HUD highlighted six guards rushing around where the cell had been, word balloons helpfully pointing out their guns. They were shouting dimly beneath the roar of the alarm, taking aim.

Maude hugged Billy to her side. “Hold tight!” 

She clicked her heels. The battle-suit’s glider fanned beneath the pair’s feet.

Maude and Billy shot up above a storming of bullets, speeding over row upon row of clockwork domes towards the exit. Guards shouted and fired wildly up at the pair.

A bullet winged Billy in the shoulder. His ring-aura wobbed like a second skin of jelly. As did the ballistic foam.

“Feels funny…”

Better than what I usually hear when someone gets shot. Maude glanced up at the cell-block’s ceiling. “24” was written across the steel in white block letters. Good. Now they had some idea of where they were. 

Maude shoved her hand into a weapons-pouch. 

“Mirth.”

Five small metal orbs flitted into the supervillain’s hands. She looked down at Billy, still clinging to her thigh. “I suggest you hold your breath, kid.”

Maude tossed the orbs over her shoulder. They struck the floor below and bounced, before exploding into plumes of thick, pink smoke, rapidly spreading across the cell bay and swallowing the guards.

Wild, pained laughter broke out below the glider. A few aimless gouts of gunfire erupted from the smoke like fleeing fireflies. 

Well, at least the guards are having a good time, Maude thought as they zoomed out of the block.   

They soon reached a bank of four brightly coloured elevators: red, blue, green and yellow. 

Maude groaned. She felt like she was trapped on a game show. Fucking too-clever designers. She tried to remember the code. Red for surface-access and administration, blue for holding areas… 

A ghostly little girl poked her head through the yellow doors and looked around, catching sight of Mistress Quickly and Billy. She beamed. “Hi Billy!”

Billy waved. “Hey Miri!”

“I’m guessing Allison and Arnold got out alright?” asked Maude. 

“Yep! Made some friends, too! One’s pink, another’s the same colour as the Meanie, sounds meaner, but is actually nice, and there’s one girl called—”

Maude snapped her fingers. “Focus, girl.”

“Oh, yeah, we got out. Allie broke the sky!”

Maude tried to keep her eyes from rolling. “And have you found engineering?”

“The power room? Yep! Just a sec.”

Miri disappeared back into the elevator. The doors opened, revealing Miri floating beside a badly shaved young man in white scrubs vacantly prodding at the “door open” button.   

Maude and Billy filed inside the elevator. The former prodded the man in the shoulder. His only response was a slight gurgle in his throat.

“Did you drug him?”

“What’s a drug?” asked Miri. “Allie just tapped him and now he does what she wants.”

“Why didn’t you go inside him?” asked Billy.

Miri frowned. “Boy.”

Maude reminded herself to never let Allison touch her.

It turned out Mistress Quickly had no more fondness for long elevator rides than the Crimson Comet. Especially not with an imaginary girl and a zombie. She glanced at Miri’s illusionary body. Her midsection trailed off into mist like Casper the Friendly Ghost’s little sister. A concession to modesty? Pure aesthetic?

“You know,” said Maude. “I don’t dabble in biology too much, but I could probably work you up a decent body, especially with the blood I picked up in Maestro-land. Not sure how I’d move you into it right now, but it’d be a start.”

Miri was quiet for some time.

Billy nodded eagerly. “We could play more! And hug!”

Miri bit her lip. “Wouldn’t it be lonely?”

Billy tilted his head. “But you’d still have us.”

Miri looked at Maude. “…Would I be able to fly?”

Maude shrugged.

“Probably. The Grand Duchess of the House of Pancakes or whatever could fly through space, but I’m not smart enough to know what I could knock together for you right now.”

The elevator doors opened before Miri could respond. 

Maude had half-expected the reactor room to be bathed in shadow and mood lighting. That was silly. People had to work here. So no, the chamber was flooded with pragmatic, ugly fluorescent light. Not that the rest of the design was as sensible to Maude’s eyes. The roof was held up by angled pillars. Control consoles were arranged in a magician’s circle around a concave pit—all straight lines and edges, beveling down into the floor like a crater carved with a slide rule. Water cascaded down the steps into a bright blue pool at the bottom.

Technicians in white scrubs wandered around dazed like badly directed film extras. Mixed among them were over a dozen much more alert looking children.

Allison looked up from where she was crouched at the bottom of the pit. “Hey, you made it!”

An aboriginal boy smiled crookedly at one of the zombified technicians. “Looks like I owe you a fiver.”

The techie groaned.

“Forget it? Sure!” Tom waved up at Billy. “Good to see ya, Bill!”

Billy blinked. “Tom?”

Brit was sitting on top of one of the consoles, swinging her legs. “I’m here too, by the way.”

Billy only had one response to this news. “Yay!”

A little girl ran up to Maude. She was light blond, and surprisingly muscular looking for a child Allison’s age. She put Maude in mind of a more sturdy Miri.

The girl was hopping in front of her like a puppy begging for treats. “Are you really Mistress Quickly?”

“…Should I answer that?”

The girl trilled with excitement, apparently taking that for a yes. “I’m Thunder-Tiger! Huge fan of your work! My mum and dad are in the scene too, ever heard of them?”

“And they are?”

“Armagetcha and Miss-Demeanor!”

Maude decided to be kind. “Oh yeah, them. Real up and comers, them.”

Thunder-Tiger hugged herself and spun in place, grinning.

Second-generation supervillain. Tragic. Maude reminded herself never to have kids.

She looked at the water-pit, listened to the soft roar of the water. She had no idea what it did . This could not be tolerated. 

Maude spotted Arnold milling about one of the consoles and pointed at her collar. “Oi, teleporter! Get this thing off me!”

A spark. Air on her neck. Maude looked down into the pool again. 

It screamed. 

Maude laughed and broke out in a run towards the edge of the pit. She jumped, clicking her heels and riding her glider down to Allison at the central pool. “Budge over and let me look!”

Mistress Quickly got on her knees and pushed the little girl aside, peering down into the too-blue water. There was a mass the size of a fat ten year old floating in the centre. Delicate feathers of stained glass as fine as silk radiated from a central jewel, caressing the water with long, gentle strokes. 

It put Maude in mind of a drowning chandelier. 

Allison was lying sideways beside the scientist, trying not to let her offense show. “I think it’s alien. You ever heard of Dr. Smith?”

“I’d put money on it,” said Maude. She spread her arms. “Do you think a real person would build a reactor room like this?”

“…Didn’t you once kill a man with bouncy balls?”

“Shut up.” 

Maude said, “Argus,” and suddenly she could see Allison Kinsey’s deeply strange insides. 

Maude looked up and around the reactor room, sliding-scale sonar peeling away the walls. Tubes ran out from under the glass feather-star, feeding the fluid it soaked in up into the complex before returning it via the cascade.

Maude whistled. “Wow, the whole place is a giant watermill.” She pointed down at the feather-star. “That thing draws energy from the space between spaces, dumps it into the juice it’s swimming in, which is then piped to every cell, lightbulb and coffee maker in this place. Hope you haven’t stuck your finger in there, stuff would probably burn a hole in your stomach.”

Allison frowned. “What do I look like? A baby?”

“Yes.”

Allison sighed. “Can you work with it?

“Oh, yeah. Shouldn’t take—”

Mistress Quickly spotted movement in the elevator shafts. “Allison, we’re about to have company.”         

Allison nodded and rose out of the pit. “Look alive people, baddies coming!”

The three access elevators disgorged twenty armed men out into the reactor room. 

Face red, neck-veins bulging like ropes beneath his skin, the squad leader screamed, “Hit the deck—”  

A bright white filament snatched the gun out of his hands, waving it over his head like a bully with a stolen toy.

“The hell—”

A pink streak raced and weaved through the guards, stripping all of them of their firearms. 

The blur came to a stop a few feet before the men, revealing Andrea clutching a bundle of automatic rifles, a few of the guns spilling from her arms and clattering on the floor.

“Looking for these?”

It was terribly unfair. Taking a human’s tools was like pulling a wolf’s teeth. What else did they have?

The guards broke out in a chorus of swearing and shouting, charging towards the girl. 

“You asked for it..”

Andrea’s eyes glowed bright red, along with those of the hissing snakes growing from her scalp. 

The front most men froze mid-run, toppling forwards when the guards behind them smacked into their backs.

Andrea screwed her eyes shut and proceeded to grow twenty five feet in size. She raised her right foot over the half-paralyzed pile of men. “Say mercy!”

Many out of synch cries of “Mercy!”

Tom golf-clapped. “Nice one, Ann.”

“I try,” said Ann. 

Tom called over to Arn, jabbing his thumb at the human pile. “Get these fools out of here.”

Arnold wondered why Tom thought he could give him orders all of a sudden. Probably because he was Tom Long, he decided. 

Languidly, the boy zapped away the guards. 

“I meant to ask,” said Allison, rolling gently in the air, “where’ve you been sending the guards?”

Arnold shrugged. “Some place I saw in my atlas. ‘Phaeacia’ it’s called. It said they liked guests.⁴” 

Mistress Quickly hadn’t even stopped working during the attempted incursion. From dozens of parts pulled from her belt, she had erected a metal cage like a spider lurking over the reactor pool, ready to devour whatever swum beneath its web. 

Allison floated back down to Mistress Quickly, loudly asking, “How are we going, Maude?”

Thunder-Tiger blinked. “Maude?”

Maude hissed, “Not when I’m in the suit, girl.” She cleared her throat. “Nearly done.” She shouted. “Hey Billy, ask Blanchey if we’re still connected to his quantum computers! Otherwise this thing is just the world’s most efficient paper shredder! And everything else shredder!”

Billy gulped and spoke into his watch. “You ready, Mr. Blancheflor?”

“Mistress Quickly’s set up and my processors are well on speaking terms, Master St. George.”

Billy gave the thumbs up.

Maude nodded, pleased. “Alright, all we—”

Klaxons. Again. But a new message:

This facility will self-destruct in ten minutes. All remaining personnel must make an orderly exit… 

There was a second of stunned silence. Then the children started screaming.

Arnold paced in a tight, frantic circle. “Crap, crap crap…”

“My mum and dad are in here!” cried Thunder-Tiger. “And—and—me!”

Tom took a lot of very short breaths. “Okay, everyone huddle up, Arnold can…” 

Allison wondered what everyone was panicking about. Then she remembered she hadn’t gotten around to telling anyone this was a possibility. Precognition could trip you up like that.

Electric guitar.                

“Everyone shut up!” Allison yelled with a touch of Billy’s power. “I’ll handle it!”

Xylophone. 

Allison turned transparent and floated through the ceiling like a ghost finding her way home. Up and up. She passed through a cell containing a white-haired old man, startled from his copy of Brave New World⁵ by the sight of her. Water tanks and layers of rock. Then a panicking cook up in the guard canteen, much to their mutual horror.  

Finally, Allison found herself in the pastel nightmare of the warden’s office.

A bullet whizzed through her wireframe body. 

Warden McNoll was standing behind his desk, a smoking Colt.45 shaking in his hands. He looked like his bones were turning to rubber. 

“Stay back!” he cried, voice warbling. “I warn ya!”

Allison returned to flesh and smiled. “You’re about to blow me up, who cares?”

The girl started walking towards the Warden.

He fired his gun again. He might as well not have bothered. Allison saw it coming before he even pulled the trigger. She dodged to the right.  

McNoll fired again. Allison dodged again, laughing. 

Frances screamed as Allison closed in. The girl grabbed his arm and grinned.

“It wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

Allison wrenched the gun down to her forehead. McNoll’s trigger finger jerked involuntarily. 

There was a bang like a whip being cracked. The warden yelped in horror. 

The bullet fell at Allison’s feet, hot and pristine. A patch of her skin the size of a penny glowed with Brit’s own light.

“See?”

Frances McNoll dropped his gun. Without thinking, he sat down in his chair and pressed a few buttons, with more certainty than he’d ever mustered before. 

He leaned towards his microphone. “Command code #23432. Cancel the self-destruct.”

There was a second of hanging quiet.

Self-destruct cancelled. 

In the back of her head, Allison felt hundreds of sighs of relief like a cool breeze. 

“You know you didn’t want to die, don’t you?” asked Allison.

“It’s what I was supposed to do…” 

“Sounds dumb.”

“What are you going to do to me?” asked McNoll. 

Allison hopped from foot to foot. “Nothing that bad. We haven’t even killed any of your guys.”

“…Can I ask you something, girl?”

“Why not?”

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“That power. Having it inside you.”

Allison considered the question. “Pretty good, if I’m being honest.”

Somewhere, Alberto smiled.

Allison put her fingers to her temple. Okay Maude, take us away.

Many floors below, Maude gripped the handle of her trigger device. She’d kept working all through the droning automated countdown, even with muscles as stiff as concrete.

The metal spider released a bundle of metallic tubes into the reactor fluid, drawing the blue liquid up into itself. 

Beneath her mask, Maude smiled. She still wasn’t sure why she’d signed up for this. But she knew one reason she’d seen it through. These fuckers thought they could build a prison to hold Mistress Quickly. So Mistress Quickly would take their prison.

She pushed the button. 

And they were gone. 

Previous Chapter                                                                                                            Next Chapter

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^{1. Technically before she became “Professor Wit.” ↩}

^{2. Wallace Grimsby, a brilliant fashion-designer turned mad scientist, specializing in the production of bespoke super-suits and high-tech armour. Originally hailing from London, Grimsby fled to Australia after drunkenly attempting to assault long time professional rival Norman Hartnell. ↩}

^{3. A sequence of realities linked by an outbreak of strange superhuman transformations in a long terraformed solar system. ↩}

^{4. A month or so after the assault of Circle’s End Supermax, a large, thought-driven galley sailed into Port Jackson Bay, Sydney, delivering those guards that hadn’t married into the local aristocracy of Phaeacia. ↩}

^{5. Technically a deeply strange, clumsily edited double edition of Brave New World and Adolus Huxley’s spiritual follow-up Island. ↩}

Before Allison could say anything more to her fellow juvenile delinquents, the rent opened in the air again, ejecting a whooping Arnold onto the spongy grass.

He scrambled to his feet, knees and shoulders bouncing with excitement. “Let’s do that again—” He blinked at the sight of the children behind Allison, rubbing his eyes and looking again. “Haunt? Brit?”

Tom and Louise both frowned. 

“Ah, sorry. Force of habit.”

A ten year old girl with pink skin and quietly hissing snakes for hair asked, “You know these two?”

“Yeah,” said Louise. “They’re from the Institute.”

Allison ran over and tried her best to hug both Tom and Louise. “We thought you were dead!”

Tom stiffened, then relaxed slightly, patting the girl half-heartedly on the back. “We were kinda wondering about you, too.”

Louise asked, “What about the rest of you guys? Mabel? Billy?” Louise’s voice rose in pitch a touch. “David?”

“Yeah,” said Arnold. “We got out.” 

“But I heard you all die!” insisted Allison. “Your songs went away.”

Tom sighed. “Sit down, everyone, this is going to take some explaining…”

Tom and Louise told the story of the raid like a joke they’d been forced to repeat once or twice too many at a party. The soldiers; the fire-fight; Linus and his father…

“…It was like we were taking a bath in the sun,” said Tom, “Then Apollo or whoever he was said he was taking us to where we needed to be…” He grunted. “Then me and Louise got dumped right in the bloody lobby here.” Tom cast his eyes up at the painted ceiling. “This is why nobody worships you gits anymore.”

Many floors above, heat lightning crackled across the wide desert sky. Not even a whisper reached the children.

Tom smiled bitterly. “One advantage of being underground I guess. You can cuss out the ultra-white-people much as you like.”

“I know it sounds wild,” said Louise, “but Linus was telling the truth.”

Arnold shrugged. “I can buy it. We met David’s granddad.”

“Really?” asked Louise. “What’s he like?”

“Evil. But kinda fun sometimes?” Arnold jabbed his thumb at Allison. “He liked Allie a lot.”

Everyone looked at the girl. Allison was clawing at the trampoline grass. 

“Ah, you alright Allie?” asked Tom.

It was odd. For nearly two months, Allison had known in her gut that all the other Institute kids were dead. But she was wrong. Some of them were still alive. More could still be out there. She should’ve been relieved. 

But some of them weren’t out there. Allison knew how they died now. Their songs lost forever all over again.

“Nope,” she answered. “But I will be soon. When we get out of here.”

The other inmates laughed derisively. 

“Yeah, sure,” said a pasty skinned teenage girl with long dark hair. “I bet you’ll be gone before the Chester Fingers speech.” 

Arnold lip curled. “Chester Fingers?”

A twangy “boing” taken directly from a cartoon sound effects library echoed through the sky, growing louder and closer with every repetition.

Arnold and Allison looked up. Nobody else did. A figure was bouncing between the sheep-fleece clouds like a demented transitional Superman. 

Allison frowned. “The heck—”

It leapt down onto the grass in front of the kids. It was a fat party-clown in a half polka-dotted mustard shift and a blue top-hat. His eyes were glassy, manic saucers, and his big red nose bore an unfortunate resemblance to a tumour.

“Hi kids!” it screeched in a far too jaunty, generically American voice. “I’m Chester Fingers!”

Allison felt a whimper in the back of her head, barely noticeable, along with a voice sourly spitting “pagliaccio.” Was that what Miri and Alberto sounded like without telepathy? “Chester Fingers,” she said flatly. “Really?”

“That’s right, [NAME TO BE INPUT], Chester Fingers!” The clown pulled out a handkerchief and violently blew his nose, spewing streams of multicoloured ribbon from his nostrils. Then he stood perfectly still, as though holding for laughs.

Chester Fingers received none. It didn’t seem to bother him.

Fingers capered between Allison and Arnold, somesalting and bouncing. “I’m here to get you settled into the Garden, where you’ll get to play with tons of new friends while all the clever scientists work day and night to make you all normal little girls and boys!”

Allison glared fire at the clown. “Normal?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “Piss off, Fingers.”

Chester Fingers turned to the older boy and wagged a finger at him. “Now, now, Mr. Long. You already have [234] attitude demerits. You don’t want to miss Movie Night again, don’t you?”

Tom scoffed. “You project the bloody films on the clouds! You can see it for miles! Fake miles, but still!”

“That sounds kinda cool…” murmured Arnold.

“You’d think so,” whispered Louise. “But it’s always some weird kiddie crap where the mouths don’t match the voices and all the boys sound like old ladies. Tom reckons they get them from Mexico¹. Tough on the neck, too.”

Chester Fingers threw his arms up, Apollo butterflies and emerald swallowtails escaping from his baggy sleeves only to dissolve mid-air. “Well, let’s get started on the ground tour!”

Allison and Arnold’s surroundings blurred. The ground was sliding like a treadmill beneath their feet, speeding them far away (or so it seemed) from the other inmates. Allison—biological treasure that she was—managed to keep her balance, but Arnold fell backwards on his rump.

They found themselves in front of a cluster of rabbit holes dug into a small hillside. Unfortunately, Chester Fingers had joined them:

“This is where the handy dandy Rabbit Reserve Corps delivers you kids three square meals a day and fresh clothes!”

A yellow-white rabbit lopped out of one of the “warrens” with a large brown package tied around its back.

Arnold grinned. “Bunnies!” 

He saw how Allison was looking at him and quickly cleared his throat. “I mean, probably fake bunnies, right?”

Chester Fingers added something like wryness to his grin. “Who’s to say what’s real, [NAME TO BE INPUT]?”

The clown winked with an audible twinkle.

The ground shifted again. Now they were in a forest clearing, where a giant, matronly dressed goose sat on a tree stump surrounded by child-sized blow up mattresses, mumbling her way through a particularly tame version of “Hansel and Gretel” from a storybook the size of a coffee table.

“And this is Mother Goose, who is always here to tell approved bedtime stories!”

“I wonder if she does Famous Five,” remarked Arnold. 

He almost startled when Chester Fingers responded, “Lucky for you, Mother Goose has indeed memorized the complete works of Enid Blyton!”

“Figures,” said Allison.

“We can never tell Billy about this.”

Again, they were carried away, this time to a shocking boring concrete toilet block in the middle of a suspiciously manicured green field.

“And these are the restrooms! Remember kids, just because we’re in the great outdoors doesn’t mean we’re animals!”

“They shoulda put a bit more imagination into this part,” said Arnold.

“Do you really want an imaginative toilet?” retorted Allison.

“Maybe not.”

There was one last stop on Chester Fingers’ tour: a pond about the size of an olympic swimming pool, filled with a bright yellow water.

“Welcome to Lemonade Lake!” cheered the clown. “Where you kids can swim and wash up to your hearts’ content! Just remember, maintain a distance of one metre from other swimmers, and no mixing boys and girls. Don’t want to catch cooties, do we?”

Chester Fingers’ head shook like a bobble-head, his pupils bouncing off and around the edges of his eyes.

Allison grimaced. “Eww! Why’d they have to make it yellow?”

“Doesn’t even look like lemonade,” said Arnold. He toed the water. “It’s not even fizzy!”

“I think they’re using it the American way. It’s what they call lemon cordial there.”

“Weird.”

Tour concluded, the floor returned Chester and the children back to where they started.

“Just so you know,” said Tom, “By now Lemonade Lake is almost exactly what it looks like.”

Chester Fingers still had speech left in him. “We at the Garden all know how scary it can be adjusting to our new home, so I hope you all are very nice to [NAME TO BE INPUT] and [NAME TO BE INPUT]. But remember, if you ever need another buddy, just call on ol’ Chester Fingers.”

Chester Fingers’… fingers detached from his hands, swimming through the air like pale, bony sea-snakes, lunging at the children and tickling them under their chins and ribs, their master giggling all the while. 

Screaming broke out among the children. Arnold flailed like he was in the middle of a swarm of bees. Tom swatted at the fingers with a scowl like Hades. Louise was curled up on the grass with her hands over her head. Allison meanwhile just shut off the nerves in her skin and stood there with her eyes screwed shut.

“Eww, ewww, eww…”

Thankfully, the tickle-fest quickly concluded with Chester summoning back his fingers. The clown threw his top-hat into the air and jumped inside, tugging the rim into the hole after him. “See you at dinner, kids!”

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“So yeah,” said Tom, “that Dante bloke was a bloody winger.”

After that introductions were made. The Medusa girl was called Andrea, and could paralyze people with sustained eye-contact. And move at tremendous speeds. And shrink and grow in size.

“Wow, that’s”—Allison tried to think of a word the other kids might know—“eclectic.”     

“Yeah, she’s a real Billy,” said Tom, master of context-clues.

“Was that the kid who dropped dead?” asked Annie.

“No,” Tom said firmly. “The one who looks like a tiger.”

“Oh, the one you never shut up about, got it.”

Arnold grinned. 

“Look, there isn’t much to talk about in here.”

“Sure. Softie.”

Tom didn’t dignify his old schoolmate with a response.

Then there was Liam, a slightly goatish boy with stubby horns growing from his forehead:

“So you’re a wizard?” asked Allison. “Like Penderghast?”

Liam shrugged. “I guess. Kinda self-taught. I think Mum’s a witch, but she’s real into God now. Still, I found an old book in the drywall. Probably that ‘evil’ Mum kept screaming about when she tried burning the house down.” He shook his head sady. “Freak-finders took it off me. But I still remember a lot” He started fretting his hands and speaking very slowly. “Or—I remember remembering, before the collar.” Liam tugged at it. “But how is knowing something a power? God, magic’s confusing.”

“I hear ya.”

Brent had skin like diamond and the strength to match. Paula could shoot garrote wire made of light from her fingers. One girl would only answer to the name “Thunder-Tiger²” and claimed to be the scion of two South Australian supervillains locked up a few floors down. 

All in all, a good bunch, Allison decided, though it occurred to her that she had no way of knowing if these kids were being honest. Still, they had to be in here for a reason.

“So what’s your plan, Allie?” asked Louise.

“You don’t really think they’re getting us out of here, do ya?” asked Andrea, hair hissing and snapping at the air around her head. 

“I don’t know,” said Louise. “Allison’s pretty smart. Or her power is, anyway.”

“Thanks,” said Allison. 

“Doesn’t matter how smart they are,” said Liam. “Doc Danny built the stupid place, and he’s been in here long as anyone.”

“Look,” said Allison, “me and Arn—wait, who’s in here?”  

“Doc Danny,” said Tom. “Mad-scientist kid. ‘Bout you and Arn’s age. He built ‘the Garden’ for the freak-finders before they threw him in.” 

“Served him right,” added Angela.

Tom looked a touch queasy at that.

“Huh,” said Allison. “Like Daedalus.”

Arnold looked at her. “Who—oh, forget it…” 

He remembered, but decided not to mention it. Sometimes Allie needed her moments.

“Take us to him,” said Allison.

The inmates exchanged looks. 

“That might be tough,” said Andrea. “He’s hiding.”

Neither Arnold nor Allison needed to be told why.

“Can’t be that hard,” said Louise. “There’s only one place to hide here.”

Everyone trapsed to the toilet block. Allison kept her enhanced eyes trained on the horizon. She could make out the miniscule points of light that made up the “sky” like Ben-Day dots in a cheap comic, and even the seams behind them where two walls met. The illusion of distance.

Allison could feel the ground flowing subtly under her feet, too—not nearly so jarringly as during the tour, but enough they were essentially walking in place. Motion without progress. Instead, Lemonade Lake and Mother Goose’s hollow drifted past them like lily pads in a stream.   

“What have you guys been up to since… you know, the thing?” asked Louise.

“Um…” Arnold wasn’t sure where to start. 

Allison decided to start with the worst. “I ate Alberto.”

Louise stared at the other girl. “What?” 

“I mean, I kinda… sucked his soul into my brain. So now I have his power. And everything else.”

“Then we went to live with the Physician on his spaceship,” added Arnold. “He had a mermaid!”

“Jesus,” said Tom. 

“It was kinda alright until he made me eat another kid so I could fly.” Quickly, Allison added, “It’s okay, but. We’re friends now!”

Tom was beginning to wonder if he and Louise were better off in the Garden.

“And then the Flying Man killed him to death,” said Arnold. 

Tom nodded thoughtfully. “Guess that figures..”

“And now we live in his house.”

Louise asked, “You live with the Flying Man?” She glanced reflexively at the simulated sky. “Is he helping you?”

“Not really,” explained Arnold. “Just his mum. The Flying Man’s dead.”

Louise wasn’t sure what she ought to ask next. “…Does she have powers too?”

Arnold shook his head. “Not really. Just sorta old.”

“Crap.”

“…I killed Lawrence.”

Louise went silent. Horror warred with a sick smile creeping towards her lips. She wasn’t sure she should be shocked at Arnold’s admission: she’d killed too, now.

“Aww, mate,” said Tom. “Sorry you had to… that.”

“I know.”

A second’s quiet, then Arnold shrugged. 

“He was an arse though, right?”

“Totally.”

It went on like that until they reached the toilets. Or the toilets reached them.

Tom stood at the head of the crowd, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “Oi! Danny Doc! Come on, we know you’re in there. Get on out here!”

A small whimper echoed out from the concrete block. 

Tom sighed and slumped his shoulders. “Look. I’m not gonna beat you up.”

“Again,” muttered Louise. 

 “Not proud of it,” Tom shot over his shoulder, before turning back to the block and yelling, “These new kids want to speak to ya!”

An angry but shaky little voice, “Oh, all the new kids want to speak to me!”

“Really speak to ya! They wanna ask you about this place!”

“I’ve told you, there is no ‘secret passage’! I didn’t build the place with my hands!”

“That’s it, I’m going in there,” said Allison. She stalked towards the entrance to the boy’s toilets.

A kid darted out of the other doorway, taking off into the distance.

Allison frowned. He’d been hiding in the girl’s. The creep. 

“Get back here—”

Allison shot past Tom after Doc Danny, pursuing him across the sponge carpet of the Garden. Symbols flashed in her mind’s eye, increasing the flow of adrenaline and blood to her legs, boosting her breathing and quieting protesting muscles. 

…Yet she couldn’t close the distance. How was this twerp—  

Oh, yeah, treadmill. 

Allison bent her knees and leapt as hard as she could, sailing a full ten feet into the air.  

The treadmill grass crossed the distance better than Allison ever could, pulling Doc Danny in underneath her. She landed on him with a thud, the ground flexing beneath them. 

Allison flipped the boy under her on his back, finding a mousy haired boy with thick clouds of freckles. He had a fading black eye and a missing tooth. Allison doubted it was a baby one.  

“I’m sorry!” he wailed. “I couldn’t say no! I don’t have powers like you—” 

Allison put a finger to Doc’s mouth. “Just tell me: what happens in here when they put the prison in lockdown.”

Doc blinked. Something like hope was born inside him. Or maybe just confusion. He tried to remember the protocols he’d written (dictated) when he was seven. “…Chester Fingers calls us all for a surprise movie. Supposed to distract us.”

Allison got off him. “Thank you.”

Come on, Comet, get a move on.

The other inmates gathered around the two.

“…Is he done explaining already?” asked Louise. “Seems pretty quick.”

Allison managed a smile. “He’s told me what I need to know.”

The cartoonishly springy sound sounded again over the Garden. Chester Fingers jumped down into their midst. 

“Oh lucky us, kids! It’s time for a surprise viewing of Tom Thumb and—”

Allison nodded at Arnold. “Now!”

The pair struck the most dramatic poses they could:

“Costume on!”

A white flash.

The inmates oohed and awed at the sight of Arnold and Allison suddenly in their costumes. Allison though, shuddered. 

Their collars were gone. 

The music swamped Allison like a flood pouring into a canyon. So many songs. Orchestras of songbirds singing in strange, rarified atmospheres. Wind howling over mountains of delicate crystal. Drums like the breath of volcanoes…

An increasingly familiar voice chirped in Allison’s ear, “Yay, you can hear me again!”

Hi, Miri. 

“Oh, thank fuck. It was like being shoved in a footlocker.”

…Hi Alberto.

Allison grabbed onto as many songs as she could at once. It was hard, carrying them all on her soul—like trying to keep her toes curled around tightrope in zero gravity—but it felt so good.

The colours of her costume ran together until they were pure, gleaming white; except for the faint, flowing rainbows of the Muse’s star on her chest.

“Wow,” said Tom. “You look neat.”

Louise looked at her friend, surprised. 

“Well, she does.”

Allison looked down benignly at Doc Danny. She extended a hand for him. “You did good, Doc.”

Doc took the offered hand cautiously and pulled himself to his feet. “What happens now?”

Allison tapped a finger to his collar. “Let me get that for you—”

A green spark, and the collar vanished. Doc gasped with relief.

“I’m smart again!”

“Yep”

Allison tapped his neck again. The boy’s eyelids fluttered shut as sleep took him. He dissolved into green light with a thunderclap before he could hit the ground.

A murmur of confusion snaked through the inmates.

“You didn’t send him to the sun or something?” asked Tom. 

“He was fragile,” answered Allison. “I sent him somewhere safe.³

Chester Fingers spoke up. “I see you two have misplaced your safety bands. Allow me to give you a big hug while we wait for replacements.”

Chester Fingers’ arms shot out, extending like pythons and coiling around Arnold and Allison, and constricting tightly around their chests. Arnold lit up with lightning, but the arm around him only fuzzed like a bad TV signal. The other children shouted and pulled at the clown’s sleeve, trying to free the boy in the cloak.

Chester Fingers beamed. “Does someone want a tickle fight?”

Again, his fingers flew from his hand, swooping at the children like greedy magpies. 

“Everyone get back!”

The inmates obeyed, though mostly in a blind attempt to flee the fingers.

Allison burst into red and purple flames, becoming a white-hot coal at the centre of a hearth. Chester Fingers shimmered as the air broiled, the disruption melting him into a mess of light and force fields⁴. 

Allison and Arnold both fell to the ground, breathing heavily.

“Okay,” said Allison. “Now—”

The grass slid fast beneath every child, rapidly carrying them away from each other. 

Allison wished she hadn’t evacuated the Doc so fast.

Arnold lay on his back as the landmarks of the Garden swirled around him. He saw the toilets sailing off in the distance like a lifeboat current in a riptide.

The floor’s like a sliding puzzle.

He pointed at the toilet block. Lightning whipped from his fingers:

A mound of concrete and water exploded from under the middle of the Garden. The grass came to a screeching, grinding halt.

The children groaned and rubbed various sore spots as they collected themselves in the corners of the Garden they’d stopped in.

Arnold looked around. “Allie?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Arnold saw his friend fly at the sky: a white star in broad daylight.

Allison quickly reached the border of the false sky, clawing at it with fingers dressed in diamond skin. Thin fissures of white light spread through the blue, like cracks in a window about to shatter. 

The sky vanished, revealing grey concrete riddled with lights like hundreds of spider-eyes. The “grass” was now dull and grey, like a cross between lunar wastes and kitchen sponges. A slide spiraled down from the middle of the ceiling. The whole Garden it turned out was about the size and shape of a high school auditorium. 

Most importantly, there was a large, vaulted door set into the east wall, which Allison was presently smugly alighting in front of.

Arnold and the inmates ran to meet her, the former darting amongst them and teleporting away their collars all the while.

“You guys have a choice,” Allison said when all were gathered. “You can help me and Arnold mess with the people who locked you up, or we’ll send you to the same place we put Doc. No shame.”

The inmates exchanged looks. 

Tom’s eyes flashed white. It was good to be able to see through little things like two foot reinforced doors again. For the first time in months, he turned wireframe, almost casually strolling through Allison and the door.

There were very muffled shouts. A few seconds later, the door turned transparent and promptly fell through the floor.

Tom was standing in a sterile white lobby. A few guards and orderlies were sunk down to their waists in the smooth, polished floors, swearing and struggling.

“Well,” said Tom. “You guys coming?”   

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^{1. In the case of Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood and Santa Claus, he’d be right. ↩}

^{2. Similar to many other children of supervillains, Thunder-Tiger was her only legal name. ↩}

^{3. Specifically, the cabin of Mistress Quickly’s mobile bunker. ↩}

^{4. The administration considered having the Physician produce a warden, but aside from the upkeep costing more, it also occurred to them a physical drone could be ganged up on. ↩}

Warden Frances McNoll was painfully out of place in his office. He was a stolidly middle-aged civil servant whose slightly oversized midsection could’ve terminated at the waist in a complaints desk. Yet here he was parked behind what resembled a starship’s command console, bejeweled with gently flashing switches and buttons. It’d taken McNoll the better part of a month to figure them all out, with the manual. 

The whole room was the nightmare brainchild of mod mad-science and baroque alien design. The walls were a mess of clashing pastels, holding up a mirrored ceiling reflecting down the pink shag carpet like a hairy sunset sky.  

The decor didn’t bother the warden. He was its boss, goddamnit! 

Circle’s End Supermax was a crime. A place where people were left to be forgotten or rendered down into second hand miracles, where even a life sentence was too finite. A place where the only crimes that mattered were accidents of birth and chance.

A better man would have balked at being asked to run such a place. A worse man could have nurtured it into an empire. Frances McNoll, though, was content with being called “sir.”

The DDHA and Australian prison service could’ve done much worse than put Frances McNoll in charge of the Circle’s End Supermax. He wasn’t a sadist by any standard. But fifteen years at Fremantle Gaol had thoroughly calloused McNoll’s social conscience. He didn’t question that men and women he knew as heroes, and children not ten years old were left to rot in his prison. He was courteous and obliging when Dr. John Smith and his disciples came looking for test subjects.

That was only the bare minimum for the job, though. What made Frances McNoll a perfect fit was his utterly unambitious power lust. It was the same clammy thrill he got being picked for milk monitor¹ in primary school. It was what inspired awed jealousy in him watching the prefects march through the halls in grammar school. The simple, pure power to say, “No. Do this.” And wielding that power at the behest of absent authority meant he didn’t even have to think of what to say. 

Not that Frances would ever have put it in those words. Far as he was consciously concerned, the chief benefits of his position were the paycheck and the excuse to not live with his family. He did hope he could retire directly after it, though—Frances wasn’t sure how you put running a secret prison on your resume.   

The television screen built into McNoll’s desk cycled through different camera-views while he sipped his coffee and thumbed through a copy of Women’s Day². Soft desert plains glowing red like the sea at dusk behind a force-field reinforced fence. Burned out hovels in the Circle’s End Quarantine Zone, empty for the moment of hazard suited scientists waving geiger counters like dowsing rods. The Level 7 holding cells: ten spheres of silver cogs sunk halfway into the floor—each containing a trapped super like a carton of eggs.

The uncertain voice crackled from the speaker on McNoll’s desk. “Uh, sir, there’s a superhero parked at the fence.”

Huh. Frances wasn’t expecting Valour till Thursday. “Buzz him—” His eyes bugged. “What?”

“I mean, fella’s all dressed up in a shiny red costume, so I’d put money on it. He just rolled up in this panel-van—oh, he’s opening the boot. He’s pulling out… some kids? And a naked lady? And they’re all tied up—” A pause. “Are we sure he’s a superhero?”

Mcnoll’s coffee sloshed out of his mug as he slammed it down on his desk. “God’s alive, Menches! Which camera?”

“F-6 should give you the best view.”

His television screen switched to a shot of the prisoners’ gate. The Crimson Comet of all bloody people was waving at the camera from behind the force-field. Except his wings were wrong. They weren’t feathered, but sharp and angular, like an art-deco angel. A little boy and girl were squirming, trussed up like hogs beside his feet. He had his hand clamped hard on the shoulder of an angry woman standing next to him in her underwear, hands bound at her waist. The superhero had placed a placard in front of him:

CAUGHT ALLISON KINSEY, ARNOLD BARNES, AND MISTRESS QUICKLY—LET’S TALK.          

A broad, if confused grin spread across Frances McNoll’s face. He had a feeling a lot more people would be calling him ‘sir’ soon.

“Buzz him in.”

⬗

Ralph Rivers was swimming in his costume. He didn’t feel the heat as keenly as some men, but this was the Great Sandy Desert, and the Crimson Comet wore all leather. He bet he squelched when he moved. The weight of his new wings was strange. Too light. Maude said these things could deflect bullets, but he felt like he was wearing foam. 

He was ashamed of his discomfort. It had to be nothing next to what Maude and the kids were in for. 

“You sure about this?” he asked Maude.

Mistress Quickly made a good show of struggling against Ralph’s grip, grunting, “I’m standing in my knickers in the middle of a scorching desert in front of a prison stuffed full of drooly blokes—some of whom have records as long as my arm and superpowers—hundreds of miles from civilization. What makes you think I haven’t thought long and hard about this?” She glared down at Allison. “At least you picked the gay guy for this.”

Ralph looked down at Allison wriggling on the access road. “Remind me why Miss Simmons has to be naked?”

Allison sat up as best she could and shouted. “Everyone knows Mistress Quickly is just an inventor, you big meanie!”

Ralph nodded. “I guess that makes sense.” He turned his head back to Maude, but seemed to look past her. “Stay close.”

Maude felt a brush against her hand. It was reassuring. 

Arnold strained against his bindings, trying to scratch the itch on his neck against the asphalt. “You sure they’re gonna come out and get us, Allie?”

“Yep,” replied Allison. “Only thing I am sure of.”

The next few minutes worth of futures were very consistent. But then the clouds of probability gave way to barren blue sky. 

It was… creepy. Expected, planned for, but creepy. Funny how quickly you could grow accustomed to precognition.

Allison tried to put the rapidly approaching void out of her mind, instead focusing on the overwhelming abundance of music. Since the Institute, she’d had to content herself with the familiar rhythms of her friends. They were powerful. Comfortable. Reliable. But it was lean. 

Here, song rose from the desert sands like shimmering heat. A buried orchestra of power over a hundred strong. Allison’s kind, trapped beneath the earth. 

There would be silence soon. But not for long.

“Oh, great,” said Maude. “That’s real comforting.”

“Shush up,” said Ralph. “They’re coming.”

A beige uniformed man with a ruddy freckled face was trying to march confidently up to the prisoner’s gate, flanked on both sides by oversized, rifle-toting guards clad head to toe in black. The man in the middle appeared to be struggling to keep apace.  

The guards’ outfits made Ralph wince. He was better dressed for the desert.  

The three reached the gate. 

“Well I’ll be,” said the man in the least painful looking uniform. “The Crimson Comet. Warden Frances McNoll. I’d shake your hand but…” He gestured at the force-field enclosed gate between them.  

Ralph smiled. “Understood, sir. Have some prisoners for ya.” 

Allison writhed on the ground. “You’ll all die! You’ll get the gas!”

Arnold joined in, “Eat your life! Eat skulls!”

For her part, Maude just stood there scowling darkly at McNoll. 

“Is that the Mistress Quickly?” asked McNoll. “Does she always… underdress?”

Ralph forced a laugh and slapped Maude heartily on the back. It felt like smacking tensed steel.  “Well I couldn’t let her keep her utility belt on, could I?”

“Could’ve let me keep my overalls…” 

Ralph said, “Should have thought about that before trying to bring back the Black Death, young lady³.”

God, he felt like a bastard. 

Mcnoll blinked. “The Black Death?”

“Yeah!” Allison cried. “Quickly was brewing it so it’d wipe out all you stupid humans!”

“I told you it was a dumb plan!” Arnold shouted. “We shoulda killed them with our bare hands.”

The warden swallowed. “I think we owe you a debt, Mr. Comet.”

“Think nothing of it,” said Ralph. “I just want them secured before they get up to any more shenanigans.” 

Mcnoll nodded. “We’re on the same page then.”

The warden punched in some numbers on a keypad by the gate. The force-field vanished as the grill of the gate retracted like vines growing backwards. 

The guards stepped forward. They were both nearly a head taller than Ralph, and neither had uttered so much as a word until now:

“We shall restrain the children’s powers.”

The guard’s accent was unplaceable, but there was a tension to it that reminded Allison of her parents when they’d discovered what she’d done to the shower.

She looked into the pair’s minds. The lights of their thoughts were as ordered as she remembered Mr. Thumps’ being, but wobbling with rage like stars being pulled at by gas giants. Blazing fires of anger under cold lakes of sedatives and Pavlovian conditioning. 

Miserable gits. Probably doing them a favour… 

The guards each removed a metal strip from their belts, both adorned with a jewel filled with glowing blue fluid. They bent down and snapped them around Arnold and Allison’s necks almost in unison. 

The collars tightened like second skin. Allison gasped. 

The music fled. The air became thin and empty. The entire world had become the Quiet Room. 

Allison clenched her fists.

Don’t freak out, don’t freak out…   

The guards proceded to hoist the children into their arms like new fathers picking a baby for the first time. 

Arnold screwed his eyes shut. It felt like his mother was carrying him to bed. But wrong. 

“Would it be possible for me to escort the prisoners to processing?” asked the Crimson Comet. “I worked hard to catch them. Peace of mind, you know.”

“Of course,” replied McNoll. “The men will all be clamouring for a look at you.”

The guards led the way through the gate with Maude squished between them, the Comet and McNoll following a few steps behind. They were bordered on either side by long force-field walls. Guard posts loomed over them every yard or so, manned by snipers. Allison couldn’t guess if they were human or Physician-made. As far as she could tell, they could’ve been store mannequins. 

Ralph was looking ahead at the prison’s main building. It was an odd looking building—like a grounded flying saucer with a rim of glass windows. Well, Blancheflor had said an alien designed it. He also said the holding cells were all underground. A flower with deep, poisonous roots.      

 “Comet, I’m sorry to ask, but how’d you know where to find us? We aren’t exactly in the yellow-pages.” 

“The freak-finders have me on call.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Need to know, of course.”

McNoll nodded warily. It made sense, he supposed. He’d checked the Comet’s file before he’d even stepped outside. The man was sanctioned, but the file didn’t say for what. Still, it was all very irregular. Frances didn’t like irregular. Irregular meant his bosses asking questions. His bosses asking questions meant a reminder that McNoll had bosses. That there were more rungs on the ladder, and people at the top waiting for him to slip.

Still, if he didn’t let the Crimson Comet in, his men would sulk at him for months. And he was giving him the three most wanted supervillains in the country. Tim Valour would worship him as a fucking god.  

Doors of reinforced glass slid open with a hiss. A desert breeze shriveled and died in crisp climate-controlled air. Mercifully human guards immediately fell upon the drones, removing the children from their arms and cutting the ropes around their wrists and ankles. They didn’t replace the bindings with handcuffs, much to Arnold’s surprise. Not Allison’s, however. They were just kids now. 

She let the walking corpses prod and poke at her. One of the men hissed in her ear, “My sister was at Royal Exhibition Hall, you little shit.”

“Was she the fat lady or the one with the wispy little beard?”

The guard slapped Allison across the face. She barely flinched. Everything felt numb right now.

Ralph frowned, resisting the urge to bolt forward and clobber the man. He did allow himself to remark, “A bit excessive.”

McNoll shrugged. “Girl’s a terrorist, Comet. Besides, not like she’s a real kid.”

The Crimson Comet raised an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

“The stuff these kids can do, kind of disqualifies…” The warden remembered who he was talking to. “I mean—it has to vary, don’t it? For every few weirdos like her and Miss October over there, at least we get one of them that turns out proper like you.”

“Thanks.”

Allison was pushed into a small, lilac-lit room. One of the walls was dominated by a one-way window. Allison felt like she was back at McClare. Or not. At least McClare had music. At least this place probably didn’t have any pianos.

A neutral, female voice filled the room. “Please step into the circle.”

There was indeed a dark purple circle in the middle of the floor. 

Curiosity pricked at Allison. “What happens if I don’t?”

“The floor will be electrified.”

Well, they were better at this than McClare. Allison trudged into the circle.

“Scanning. Please stand still.”

A wall of purple light appeared to Allison’s left, closing in on her.

The girl rolled her eyes as it washed over her. She needed to introduce this computer to Blanchey. Maybe the purple and the blue was a boy-girl thing. 

“Scan complete. Inmate is clean of unwanted technology. Biology shows signs of physical enhancement, adjusting containment parameters.”

A panel in the ceiling slid open, dropping a set of folded, child-sized white coveralls in front of Allison’s feet. 

“Please dress in the garment provided.”

Allison frowned at the mirror. “Doesn’t look easy to go to the bathroom in.”

“Floor will be electrified in sixty seconds.”

“Okay, okay, I’m doing it.”

She quickly stripped off and slipped into the jumpsuit. 

“What now?”

“You will be deposited in the Juvenile Rehabilitation Area.”

“What—”

The circle gave way like a trapdoor beneath Allison’s feet. She screamed as she dropped into a dark tube.

The tube quickly curved beneath her. She was sliding. It was a slide, bending and turning as she built up speen.

Even through the fog of her sudden deafness, Allison had to grin. “Wheeee!”   

She turned a corner and found herself hurtling towards a light. Allison braced herself.

She shot out of the transport slide (the DDHA’s one positive contribution to mankind), landing with a thud in something thick and spongy. 

Allison recovered fast, rolling over and getting back to her feet. She was standing on what felt and looked and felt like a field of grass made out of trampoline, surrounded by boundless hills and skies. But there was a hole in the world just in front of her, a dark mole in the skin of the world. The slide exit, she realized.

She stepped forward to examine it, only for the hole to close, leaving only thin air.

“Huh.”

Allison looked around. The sky was shoddy. She swore she could see paint streaks. The clouds were cartoonishly fluffy and regular, like they’d been sourced from her old bedroom wallpaper. There was a forest in the difference, but the trees were all too-triangular illustrated pine. 

Fake. The whole place was fake.

She felt a sudden urge to set it all on fire.

“Hey, new meat.”

Allison turned around to find a small crowd of children regarding her with wary fascination, all in coveralls like her own. 

At the head of the crowd was an elfin looking girl with dark blue hair, next to a brown skinned older boy with a look of disdainful confusion.

“Tom? Louise?”

“Jeez, Allie, they got you too?” Tom Long squinted. “And what the hell happened to your eyes?”

Small worlds. 

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^{1. A staff member or student trusted to make sure school children drank their state mandated milk. ↩}

^{2. As in all government buildings, it was seemingly the only magazine on site. ↩}

^{3. Technically speaking, the bubonic plague had yet to be wiped out in 1965. ↩}