People Can Depend On Me When Things Get Tough.

THEN

I STOOD OUTSIDE Stage 32 and waited for St. George to appear in the sky. Any minute now. This was going to be fun.

Being out on the streets of the Mount reminded me of another day out in the sun with St. George, almost a year ago. I look back on it a lot, even though it’s still confusing as hell. The moment that I can remember from two different points of view.

I remember being Christian Nguyen and seeing John Smith nod.

I remember being John Smith and seeing Christian in front of me. “I’m glad to know there are people like you here in the Mount. People we’ll be able to depend on even when things are tough.” I remember feeling the words slide off his tongue, and echoing in her ears. “I can depend on you when things get tough, can’t I, Christian?”

I remember being Smith and feeling the ever-so-faint tingle that told me the question was burrowing its way into her mind, planting ideas.

I remember being Christian and smiling. “Of course you can,” I’d said. “I’m always honored to serve the people.”

I said, “Excellent.” I used my confidential smile, the one that made people think we were sharing a small secret, and I remember seeing the smile as Christian and feeling proud.

It’s a weird sensation, I’ve got to admit. Remembering it all through two sets of eyes, two sets of ears. I’m stuck with it, though. It’s the one part of her that’s held on, the single most important moment of her life. The moment she met me.

Of course, I wasn’t expecting this. I just planted a few deep thoughts and ideas and figured I’d have a happy sock puppet at the Mount. Someone in my hip pocket if I ever needed them.

It turns out Christian had a little secret of her own, though. Nothing big on its own, nothing huge. Every time you hear about someone who could’ve been the greatest physicist in the world if they put their mind to it, it stands to reason there’s a few dozen people who would’ve been tied for the fiftieth- or hundredth-greatest physicist in the world. If they’d put their minds to it. Hell, I’d bet there’s a good chance she never even realized she had it. She was in deep denial, half the reason it never worked on anything past a subconscious level. And even then, it was a timid thing.

Christian had her own superpower. She taps into the gestalt, if I remember those old Psych 101 terms. She brings people together, connects them on a subconscious level. I mean, how else could someone with zero charisma and interpersonal skills be a successful, honest politician?

Of course, if I’d known that ahead of time, things might’ve gone differently. Instead, we had two sets of mental abilities overlapping and amplifying each other to crazy levels. A harmonics thing, I think. Maybe her gestalt thing, too. The whole being greater than the sum of the parts or something.

I ended up planting a very big idea. Much bigger than I’d planned. And she brought us together.

Of course, being in this body took a lot of adjusting. There were all those mornings Christian woke up and couldn’t figure out why her face didn’t look right. Plus all the old things she couldn’t remember, and the new things she could. Most people would start panicking about Alzheimer’s or something, but she was so focused on rallying the After Death movement and her steamroller-style mayoral campaign that she just kept brushing it aside. And she kept saying the phrase I’d given her again and again, like an error-loop glitch that keeps popping up.

People can depend on me when things get tough.

She started forgetting her life and started remembering mine.

St. George appeared in the sky and dragged me back to the present. He spun around in a circle like a kite whipping through the air. Then he dropped down and landed on the pavement a few yards away.

“What’s up, Christian?” he said. He always sounded so sincere. It’s incredible how fast that can get grating.

“I need to show you something,” I told him.

He glanced back across the Mount. “I’m kind of busy,” he said. “We’re trying to juggle a couple of things before—”

“It’ll just take a moment,” I said. “You can spare a minute, can’t you?”

“Yeah, of course.”

I turned away and fumbled with the lock. It was a show. I’d done it three times already at this point. “I’m glad you made that announcement,” I told him without looking back. “I’m sure a lot of other people are, too. It will make the vote go much smoother, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” he said.

The lock popped open and I pulled the handle. I glanced back at St. George. “Are you coming?”

He reached over and held the door open, then followed me in. One thing I’ve got to say, men treat women differently. It’s a bunch of little stuff, but it’s there. It threw me at first, but I’ve gotten adjusted to it.

St. George walked behind me toward the center of the stage. I’d set up some blankets, just to make things a bit homey. People are always a bit confused when things look homey, and confusion usually works in my favor. Three of the blankets already had people stretched out on them.

“Danielle?” he called out. “What are you doing here? I was trying to reach you for half an hour.”

My favorite redhead didn’t move, of course. She’d been the second one I’d grabbed. I couldn’t risk her recognizing some speech pattern or habit of mine. It was tempting to use her once or thrice for old time’s sake, too, but I don’t have that equipment anymore. Still getting used to that part of this, I’ve got to admit.

“Sorry about that,” I told St. George. “She was helping me with something. You don’t mind, do you?”

He was going to say no, of course, but by then he’d noticed Danielle wasn’t moving. And he’d seen Freedom’s bulk spread out on the farthest blanket. And, just past Danielle, a third person. In the dim light of the stage, she blended in and was hard to spot.

To give him credit, he didn’t shout her name or anything melodramatic like that. He just charged across the room. Leaped, really. A noble man of action.

I took my time and walked up behind him. He had the cloaked bitch in his arms. He tried to wake her up, pressed his fingers against her throat, and listened to her breathing. I was maybe five feet behind him when he glanced back. “Did you know about this?”

I nodded and smiled. “Do you want to lie down next to her?”

He set her back down on the blanket, placed a fold of it under her head, and returned my nod. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I’d like that.”

His brow wrinkled, and I saw a spark of fear deep in his eye. He recognized what was happening. What he was doing. It’s always more fun when people realize what’s going on.

“Just stretch out and relax,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be a good way to spend the afternoon?”

St. George looked down at one of the open blankets, flipped the edge over to double it up, and sat down on it.

It’s a little risky, doing this. Getting them alone one by one and then dropping them. One quick response, one of them puts it together before I can speak, and this fun little experiment is over.

But it’s still better than the alternative. I’d heard stories about what happened to me out at Project Krypton. Well, to other-me, I guess. I pushed for details where I could, eavesdropped when I couldn’t. I heard about other-me getting dragged out from behind the curtain. Colonel Shelly dying. Professor Sorensen dying. Stealth planting a knife in other-me’s throat before I could escape to Groom Lake.

I couldn’t risk that happening here. First rule of building your new empire—get rid of the people who brought down your last one. The people who know how to beat you.

I’m still amazed I got Stealth. Granted, I took her out first so she wouldn’t have a chance of being suspicious. Well, any more suspicious. She’s so damned fast. But she never saw it coming and four minutes after walking into the stage to check out “safety concerns” she was unconscious on the floor.

Danielle was next. And Freedom’s still the same clueless idiot, deferring to anyone he considers above him. God bless the military mind-set.

St. George stretched out on his blanket and shifted a few times to get comfortable. He glanced over at Stealth, then up at me. “You’re right,” he said. “This is kind of nice.”

I plastered a smile on my face. “Why don’t you take a nap?” I suggested. “A good long one.”

He yawned and blinked twice.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to dream about a world where there aren’t any zombies?” I asked him. “No exes, no ex-virus, nothing ever happened. You could forget all of it. Just the plain old world where you’re a normal guy, doing whatever the hell you did before you became a superhero. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“God, yes,” he said, and yawned again.

One great thing about this new, overpowered skill set is the dreams. The old me, the other-me who’s out at Groom Lake or somewhere, could force someone to sleep, but eventually they’d wake up. I couldn’t control their subconscious. But with Christian’s powers in the mix, I can make people combine their dreams and build on each other’s memories. Two or three people together can make a great, rich world, each of them filling in the gaps for the others. A world they never need to wake up from.

St. George managed to turn his head toward Stealth before his eyelids got too heavy. Then he just rolled back to center. His breathing leveled out.

I whispered a few more suggestions. I wanted them out of the way, lost in the dreamworld. But any good jailer knows you want a wall around the prison, too, just in case people get out of their cells. Just in case they start to wake up. Nothing too elaborate, just a believable tweak on reality, enough to keep them busy for a few—

“What are you doing?”

I turned around and saw Sorensen’s brat halfway between me and the door. The Corpse Girl, she likes to call herself. I should’ve guessed she’d be here. She follows St. George around like a dog. I wonder if he’s doing her. Necrophilia’s really not my thing, but I can see the appeal of a body that’s almost-eighteen forever.

She marched across the room. In the dim light, her skin looked pure white. Even walking, she had a stillness to her that had taken me days to pin down. Sometimes she stops breathing. It’s one of those subtle things, a person’s chest moving up and down. You don’t realize you register it until you meet someone who doesn’t do it. She doesn’t blink sometimes, either. It’s kind of eerie, and I say this as someone who’s been mentally cloned into another body.

I’ve got to admit, it creeped me out when I became conscious enough to realize who the Corpse Girl was. Little Madelyn, the daughter Sorensen would not shut up about, even after I’d arranged to have her killed in front of him. It was like some bad horror movie. The dead come back to life, you turn around, and there’s the girl you killed in act two, back for zombie revenge.

Of course, she had no idea who I was. Then or now.

Granted, I didn’t know enough about her, either. She’s dead, but she’s not your standard ex-human. Twice I’ve given her simple commands, as a test. They last about a day with her and then she just seems to shrug them off. I’ve heard she’s got some sort of memory problem, which makes sense in a way.

It meant I was going to have to be harsh with her.

She was twenty feet closer when she saw the heroes stretched out on the floor. Her sneakers chuffed on the concrete floor as she stopped. There was just enough contrast to her iris that I could see her eyes flitting back and forth over all the figures. Mostly St. George, of course.

I gestured with my hand. “Could you come here?”

The Corpse Girl started moving again. She took a few more steps, then stopped again. She looked at me. “Did you do this?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Could you come over and help me, please?”

That was enough. She walked over next to me and I pointed at one of the blankets. “Don’t you want to take a nap? You can sleep on St. George’s other side, if you like.”

She blinked and trembled for a moment.

“Don’t you want to go to sleep?” I asked her again.

Her eyelids drooped down, sagged lower and lower, and then snapped open. She glared at me. It was kind of eerie with the dead eyes.

I smiled and laced my fingers together. “Now, don’t you look at me that way,” I said to her. “Are you a little overtired, maybe?”

And then I hit her across the jaw with both hands.

She staggered back, and almost fell. Then she straightened up and her thin fingers rolled into fists.

I let my own fingers come apart and shook them out. I suck at fighting. I think I may have broken a finger. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

She winced and reached up to touch one of her cheekbones.

“Are you too dizzy to stand up?”

The Corpse Girl swayed and dropped to one knee.

I watched her try to keep her balance and tapped my fingers against my leg. One of Christian’s odd muscle memories that shows up now and then. “You were sick when you were little, right? Muscular dystrophy or something? Your dad would mutter about it now and then after I killed you the first time.” She teetered back and forth, trying to fight the questions. “He did something to fix you, didn’t he?”

She fell over on her side. I took her by the arm and half led, half dragged her toward the circle of heroes. She struggled for a minute and I clucked my tongue at her. “You don’t want to act that way, do you?”

She stopped fighting.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just relax?”

She rolled down onto the blanket. She ended up on her side, then tipped over onto her back. She stopped breathing again.

I whispered to her as she settled down. She struggled a bit, but the questions sank into her brain and the ideas took hold. She blinked a few times and then went limp. Her blank eyes stared up at the ceiling.

She was going to be the wild card in all this. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold her, and I wasn’t sure if holding her would have any effect. I don’t think she can starve to death. I was tempted to just stomp her head in, but if the bodies were found that would lead to questions.

And I didn’t want to deal with questions. Not yet, anyway.

For now, it’s just a nice, peaceful sleep.