red-headed android

Five thousand euro. That’s what I’m dying over, five thousand euro.

The worst part is knowing it. Cattle don’t feel anything walking into the slaughterhouse. They’re too stupid. Nothing goes through their thick skulls until the killing bolt. But me? I see it coming a mile away. I know that anyone who pays five thousand euros anonymously, through an agent, for a Prague rent boy has a freezer full of body parts.

I know that. And I’m still here. Maybe I want to die. Maybe it’s better than paying rent and eating the same shitty ramen every night and fucking strangers to afford it, spending all my free time trying to get some new pirated Soviet program to work on my kludged-together machine just so I can feel like I accomplished something.

No. Arrest yourself. Don’t let the poison set in again.

Light and music flood the streets. The same-old same-old slow-running Vltava is a dream at night, a painting. There’s kushikatsu in the squares and absinthe in the shops and jazz in the clubs underground, the local kind played by some kid with a horn and a dream that sinks into your bones and sets them on fire. You’re six months clean from cigarettes and six years from hurting yourself. Your mother loves you.

You don’t want to die, Valentyn. You want everyone else to, at most. You want to live.

I want to live, so I’d better convince myself I’m going to, because five thousand euro is five thousand euro. The address the woman on the phone gave me, it’s a hotel. That’s reason number one. I’m not going to die because it would be stupid to murder someone in a hotel. Reason number two is that Marina knows where I’m going and when to expect a call from me. Reason number three is…

Is…

Is that they paid in advance. Yes. That’s it. Sure, the transfer was from some Soviet bank account with no name on it, scary enough on its own, but… but with all that put together, they’re probably just going to make me call them names and hit them, or piss myself or something. God knows. Yeah. It’s just some geezer Russian diplomat paying me to be quiet about his kinks.

That illusion holds together into the lobby. It holds together as the sharp-eyed woman with the thick Ukrainian accent grips my hand too damn tight, takes a brusque phone call while we’re in the elevator, and starts rattling off instructions about what not to do with the client.

Don’t turn the thermostat up. Don’t say you’re too hot. Don’t light a cigarette, don’t throw out any scraps of paper, don’t ask about his job, don’t ask about his family, it goes on and on and on. Usually I’m the one who gets to make the rules! Mine are simpler, too. No blades, no choking, no tying me up, everything else is up to my rates—there, let’s go! Ugh!

By the time I get to the room, I’m convinced this poor bastard must be a nervous wreck. Can’t do anything! Who’s afraid of thermostats? Who has trauma related to throwing paper away? I’ve been through enough that it almost makes sense to me—I’ve lost friends telling them not to fucking smoke around me—but come on. It sounds like a parody.

She practically shoves me through the door, and before he even opens his mouth I’m face-to-face with that slaughterhouse bolt.

It all makes sense, all of a sudden. The room’s colder than a meat locker, and he’s sitting there in shorts and a tank top playing video games like nothing’s wrong. He’s… god, he’s younger than me, he’s not some perverted geezer paying hush money for a boy who knows how to keep his mouth shut. He looks at me like he’s shocked to see me, like he didn’t even know when I’d show up. Most people are acutely aware of how much time they paid for. He’s not. He’s not because he’s never had to handle his own affairs in his whole life.

Because he’s a superhero.

He’s a Soviet state-sponsored superhero. There aren’t supposed to be any west of the Dneistr right now. They’re supposed to tell the EU when they conduct operations here. What’s he doing—

You’re paid not to ask that question, Valentyn, you idiot. Shut the fuck up and do what you’re told. Three hours. The deal was for three hours. After that, you can forget the whole thing.

I inhale and my lungs fill with icy air. By the time he figures out what to say to me, I’m biting my tongue to keep my teeth from chattering.

“Come on, sit down. Don’t be shy.” he says, almost tripping over his words. His accent is so thick I barely understand him.

The next forty-five minutes feel like I’m back in high school, only instead of being a carefree idiot who thinks he’s invincible, I’m scared to fucking death. My heart races as I sit there, shivering in my coat, listening to this stupid kid ramble on about this shitty team shooter he’s forcing me to play with my freezing fingers. Okay, we’re probably about the same age, but god, he’s a fucking loser! The power to kill, the power to change the world and you’re sitting here with a prostitute you hired playing video games and making small talk? Not even the friends I had when I was sixteen were this pathetic all the time. Sometimes we said what we meant. Sometimes we got off our asses and did something instead of complaining and wishing for everything to be brought to us.

He catches himself whenever he talks about his work. I’d say whenever he’s about to, but that’d be giving him too much credit. He keeps mentioning people he works with, and he keeps calling them by their super names. I don’t recognize half of them—people that powerful make me want to puke, so I tune the news out whenever it mentions them—but it’s obvious that he’s not supposed to talk about them. I just smile and nod and wonder when he’s going to work up the courage to tell me to take my clothes off. God, that’s going to be miserable. It’s fucking freezing in here.

The courage never comes. He’ll have to drink it. He shuts off the game and asks me if I want some vodka before we start.

My teeth grit involuntarily, and it’s not just the cold. I don’t fucking drink on the job. It’s right there next to my rates. Is he too stupid to understand that, to understand why? I’m about to chew him out—polite as I can, like I would with any other client—but the words die in my throat.

The slaughterhouse bolt is in my peripheral vision again.

He’s a superhero. If flicking on a lighter is enough of a deal-breaker that this whole thing could fall through, he must be one of the freaks. Hanging by a thread. It only takes a little bit for them to snap sometimes, for them to forget they’re people and sink back into that lizard-brain animal rage that makes you trigger. Trigger. Get powers. Blow the world to pieces, tear reality in half, turn into a monster.

Maybe when he triggered it was because there was a fire. But maybe it was because someone told him no.

“Sure,” I say, with my best smile, and watch as he fills my glass.

My hands shake. He must think it’s because I’m cold. Let him keep thinking that. Please, god, let him keep thinking that. I don’t know what he’ll do if he thinks I’m afraid of him. I don’t know what he’ll do. I don’t even know what he can do to me.

I should be more careful what I wish for. He tells me, tells me in excruciating detail. It’s not his fault; he thinks he’s being cool, thinks he’s impressing me when he tells me what he did in Chechnya. Rizzing me up, you might say—as if he fucking has to do that! He paid for me! Quit pretending I’m your crush, you stupid son of a bitch. I pretend to drink, over and over, as he guides me through just what he could do to me, if I light a flame, if I throw a receipt away in front of him, if I talk back.

Fields of corpses, frozen in place. Whole buildings turned to tombs, ice spilling from burst pipes as the terrorists stand there like statues, chilled through from the outside by the flash-freeze. Still conscious as their skin and muscles froze. It’s hard thinking about sometimes, he says, but his handler—that must be that Ukrainian hardass—says that freezing to death is painless, and besides, they were fucking terrorists. They deserved it.

They must have been so scared. Trapped inside their own frozen skin, waiting for the cold to take them.

He keeps rambling on and on and on about Gotland, and his teammates for some mission he’s going on there, and I sit there and try not to think about it, praying he’ll get around to what he hired me for before he runs out of time—but what else do I think about? How not to set him off? My impending death? Fuck that! I even ask a few questions, hoping it’ll finally get him comfortable with me, hoping that once I break the ice and his hormones kick in he’ll shut the fuck up.

I learn way too goddamn much about Soviet military operations in the Black Sea. The whole time, all he can talk about is how cool his powers are and how much the Motherland needs him. I smile and nod and slip my fingers under his shirt, hoping that he’ll remember what I’m here for. I have to believe that once I get him off the nightmare will be over. His skin is like ice, cold and hard and unyielding. Finally, he tells me what he wants, and to call him Vasya while we do it—’Vasily’ is too formal and only his bosses and the media call him ‘Permafrost’. He even offers to turn the thermostat up a little so I’m not too uncomfortable.

He wants me to top. Of course he fucking does! Just my luck! He’s five degrees on the outside, with my luck the inside of him is even worse! I’m not getting paid enough to get frostbite on my cock.

In the first act of divine mercy I’ve experienced all night—hell, all year—he’s warmer on the inside. That makes the whole ordeal land just this side of bearable. I’m shaking the whole time. It’s torture trying to keep up appearances, trying to be a professional, trying so hard to make him think I’m not scared out of my mind, that I’ve got him and I’ll hold him close and talk dirty to him and be in control of him. No, be in charge of him, be responsible for him, like the manchild he so obviously is. He wants me to do it all, do everything for him, without a shred of fear or judgement or apprehension or any of the other feelings fighting to escape me the whole time I’m fucking him.

I hate him for being a killer. I hate him for being powerful. I hate him for making me part of this. Looking at him makes me scared for my life. Every unexpected move he makes, every time he opens his mouth to say something, it feels like he’s about to switch himself on, turn this whole hotel into a lifeless ice palace and freeze me through like those terrorists. His voice wavered when he invited me in, but it stayed stone cold when he talked about murdering those angry, frightened men who thought guns could protect them against a superpower. He wouldn’t think twice. I’m decoration to him, like I am to everyone, only he doesn’t even have basic humanity to keep him from hurting me. When he finishes, the whole time he does, I’m trying not to puke in anticipation of what would happen to me if the feeling made him lose control, if he used his powers for even a moment.

Then it’s over, or close enough to it. He lets me put on some layers while I hold him afterwards—you always leave time for that, everyone asks for it. He cries, and he vents in his drunken voice and his shitty English about how no one appreciates him and how unfairly the media treats him. I’m almost through being terrified, so now it’s my pity I can’t show him. I can’t show him how much it makes my stomach churn watching someone so powerful, who could defect at any moment, say no to all of this and go be a hero somewhere else, just… lie there and wallow in the imaginary misery of whatever he thinks is his problem. Not being loved, if I had to guess from his rambling. Probably not even in the way friends love you, given that he spent an hour paying me to act like his gaming buddy.

There’s a theme in his inane, childish rambling, that no one loves him because he’s cold all the time. It’s not that you’re frozen, Vasya. It’s not that. It’s that you never do anything for yourself. It’s that you need everything fed to you.

I almost have a heart attack when he calls after me. I turn around, one foot out the door, hoping it’ll be brief.

“Y-you’re beautiful,” he stammers out. It sounds like an apology.

“Thanks,” I say, my customer-service smile plastered on my face. Shut up. I know I’m hot. It doesn’t make me feel any better.

There’s a long, awkward pause as he stares at me, eyes wide, long lashes fluttering as he blinks again and again.

“Are you going to come back? I mean, do you want to? Would you come back, I mean?”

My composure breaks. Shit! Talk, don’t think, he can’t see you thinking it over! Say something!

“Yeah,” I say, and mean it. “Yeah, I would come back.”

For the same exorbitant rate, obviously. But I don’t say that. I could hurt his feelings.

His feelings are all that matters. I live or die by his feelings. I live or die by all their feelings, every client, everyone. The whole world lives and dies by his feelings, by supers’ feelings. They can rip it all apart, tear it all down if they like. Feelings are all there is to stop them. Theirs, and other supers’. Mine don’t matter. Ours don’t matter. None of it will ever matter.

That’s what’s so terrifying about it. That’s it. I’m used to being a toy for cash, it’s been years since I started. I know what it’s like. I control it. I asked for it.

I was his toy before he ever thought to hire me. The whole world is his toy.

All of a sudden, just for a second, I don’t pity him anymore. I’m grateful to him. I almost love him.

If the whole world was my toy, I wouldn’t be kind to it. I wouldn’t stutter. I wouldn’t tiptoe around it. I would use it until it broke. I would do whatever the fuck I wanted.

You say that, Valentyn. Are you brave enough to really do it? Are you brave enough to grab the world by the throat?

Yeah. Yeah, I’d better be.

“You’re alright, Vasya. You know, I game sometimes too. Hit me up if you ever need a teammate.” I say, lying through my teeth. And knowing he won’t. His handler won’t let him.

I’ll do the boyfriend thing for five thousand euro a night, international state-sponsored killer or not, cock frostbite or not. Fuck it. I’m not afraid. This is the best thing that ever happened to me and I’d better start acting like it.

His personal KGB hardass grills me on my way out. She doesn’t say it, but she wants to know if he told me anything. I’m not stupid enough to tell the truth. I shrug and say he should get on some meds for that body temperature problem of his, and that no, he didn’t say shit. Don’t even remember his name. Seems to satisfy her.

I take the most scalding-hot shower of my life the minute I get home, but I still can’t sleep. It’s too cold in here.

#

I figure if I ever get another call, it’ll be weeks from now. I figure wrong.

Three days after I met him, I’m sleeping off a hangover when my work phone rings and it’s Ms. KGB. She says Vasya’s obsessed with me, wants to see me again. Yeah, uh-huh, I know. Says he’s leaving the country soon. Well, shit, there goes my best revenue stream, but it was a pipe dream anyway.

Says he wants it to be at my place. I’m halfway through my attempt to stutter out a ‘fuck no, are you crazy?’ when she cuts me off.

“I’ll pay you triple. In advance. Stay home tonight, he’ll come calling. Your address?”

My jaw drops. That’s a lot of money. He’s leaving the country. Who cares if the Soviets know where I live, I’ll move out of this shithole soon anyway at this rate. Come on, Valentyn, didn’t you say you’d do the boyfriend thing for that much?

This is not ‘the boyfriend thing’. This is… this is fucked! It’s unhealthy fucking attachment from a murdering international manchild, that’s what it is! Work and real life don’t mix. They don’t come together. Ever. That’s how you completely fuck yourself. That’s how you get a fucking stalker. What happens when he’s out here on another job for the Motherland? He’ll come knocking again!

And what’s so bad about that, huh? The Soviet state department pays your bills is what that means. Coward. You have the nerve to look down on Vasya for not taking hold of his life? Look at you. Look what you’re scared of. Hiding under the covers from superheroes, sweating, afraid to face the world. This is why they run everything. That KGB woman, she’s not afraid of him, she knows he’s just a loser kid who can’t control himself. The USSR gets it. Supers are people. That means they’re fallible. Supers are people. That means they get scared.

Supers are people. They have wants, and needs. Supers are people. They’re human beings, and everyone needs someone, and if you’re what they want, you’re the one who controls them. Just like with everybody. We’re all the same.

You want me so badly? Cut me a percentage. Of your cash, of your power.

I tell her where he can find me.

#

“You know that’s how you wind up in eleven pieces in someone’s freezer, right?” Marina teases before taking a sip of her latte.

Roll my eyes.

“Yeah, it was stupid, but so what? A fucking superhero, Marina. It’s—it’s the jackpot. Socially maladjusted weirdos who can’t be seen soliciting sex and who have gigantic budgets dedicated to keeping them happy and working. We used to dream about this kind of thing.”

“You used to dream about this kind of thing. That’s why we broke up. You’re always trying to conquer the world,” she says, giving me a smile and a congratulatory punch on the arm.

“Yeah, well this time I did,” I say, flexing, baring my teeth. “Sure you don’t want to give it another go? I’m a bigshot now.”

She laughs. I sit back and nearly pass out because I’ve slept six hours in the past two days. The coma only ends when she taps me and points to the TV in the corner of the cafe.

“Is your new friend on this case?” she asks playfully. I look, and…

‘Europol Agents, Eurofuture Capes Investigating Alleged Soviet Plot to Assault Visby Monitoring Center.’ What?

“Yo, turn that up!” I shout to the barista, who scoffs and pretends to look for the remote. It doesn’t matter. I know what it is just by looking.

That Gotland thing—Visby’s on Gotland—they got caught. They got caught planning it! Yeah, I remember now, Vasya said they were gathering intelligence up there. Fucking Soviets and their fucking euphemisms! They were going to break into the most important Eurofuture base on the continent. It could’ve turned into a full-blown cape-fight. And they got caught? Burnt? Their cover got blown? When!?

I sit there, eyes glued to the screen, as the reporter goes on and on about some skirmish in a warehouse in Gdansk. Marina asks if I’m wondering whether my cash cow got slaughtered and I tell her to shut the fuck up. Or something. It’s a lot harsher than I meant it to be.

The reporter concludes by saying that Europol is still trying to identify the Soviet agents and supers involved in the massacre—it’s always a massacre, these things always turn into massacres. Two dozen Polish dockworkers and a Eurofuture cape. A kid. Fifteen years old.

She says that anyone with information should come forward as soon as possible.

I look to Marina to see if she’s seeing this shit too, hoping I’m hallucinating from lack of sleep or something. She’s gone. Of course she’s gone. As far as she’s concerned, I only care about my payday. Always trying to conquer the world.

No. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, no!

I rush outside and grab a paper from the nearest newsstand. There it is—last night, just before sunset, there was a raid on this warehouse in Gdansk that turned out to be some kind of Soviet staging area, they were going to fill an outgoing supply ship with undercover capes and storm the place. Looking for something, god knows what, I don’t follow politics.

Just before sunset. But when she called me—when that KGB woman called me—that was afterward. It was after it happened.

They know. They know what he told me.

The street fades to a noisy blur around me. Someone keeps asking if I’m going to pay for the paper. I can’t focus. I can’t see anything except the slaughterhouse bolt aimed right between my eyes.

Go to the cops, Valentyn. No! What a stupid idea! The Soviets know my face! They’ll have someone outside the station!

Call the tip hotline. Eurofuture can protect you. Except—except Eurofuture couldn’t even protect one of their own from these people, could they? That girl who died at the warehouse was one of their capes and they couldn’t save her! And even if they could, even if they would, who’s going to get to you first—them or the Soviets?

Fuck it, I’ll take that chance!

I thrust the paper back into the stand, duck into the nearest alleyway and fight my coat looking for my phone. Fucking left it inside, of course, okay, look for my work phone. I’ve just finished looking up the tip hotline when—

Incoming call. Same number as before. The Soviets. The ice woman and her pet emotional cripple, and probably a whole shadowy cadre of agents I didn’t even see when I walked right into their jaws that night.

Why would they call me? For all they know, I could’ve already gone to the police. My phone could be tapped.

I pick up, raise the phone to my ear, and quietly breathe into the receiver.

“Is that you, Valentyn?” It’s Vasya.

I don’t say anything. My palms are sweating. I’m shaking, and not just from the fear. It’s cold all of a sudden.

“Hey, we’re still on for tonight, right? Don’t worry. Nothing’s changed, no matter what you might’ve seen, um, on the news or anything, okay? I really want to see you again before I have to leave.” he continues.

Fuck you! Lying or not, what do you think I am, stupid!? Who would ever agree to this!? I’m on the next train out of here. I’m young, I’m cute, I can code—I’ll start a new life! What’re you going to do to me if I just disappear!?

“No, Vasya. Sorry.”

I know he’s on the other end of the line, off in the ether, instead of right here with me, but it still feels like that ‘no’ is a killing curse. Like my life ends when it leaves my mouth.

There’s a long pause. I listen, frozen solid, for any sign of hope.

“You have to stay put. Don’t go anywhere. Listen, you have to be here tonight. It’s the only way we—I can guarantee your safety. Please. You don’t deserve to get caught up in this. I need you to stay put. Please. Just… just stay home. Until I get there.”

His voice is more serious than it ever got the whole time we were together. That puts a seal on it. They’re watching me already. If I try to leave Prague, I’ll be dead before I set foot on the train. If I try to call Eurofuture, I’ll be dead before they get here.

I’ll be dead no matter what. In six hours, we’ll meet again. What do you think is going to happen to you then, Valentyn?

Why are they making him do it? He’s unstable enough already! It doesn’t make any sense, just have me shot or poisoned or whatever, they’re good enough at that! He must be a liability right now, even if he wasn’t at Gdansk! Why send him in after me!?

Wait! They’re not sending him in after me to kill me.

Yeah, that’s it! That’s it. He wants to offer me asylum. A broad grin spreads across my face. Finally, all that hard work plying my trade is paying off. He’s so head-over-heels in love he can’t even kill me!

The mania fades. The cold grey of the city air settles over me again, heavy and thick, burying me.

No. That’s not true. There is no saviour coming to rescue you. There is no knight in shining armour. Maybe that night you were like a drug to him. Maybe. But they take capes off drugs. They keep them in shape. They keep them from getting attached, tied down. You are nothing but dead weight for them to cut loose. Maybe they’ve talked the poor boy into it by promising they won’t hurt me, but I’m still going to end up in a ditch with two holes in the back of my head, and he’s going to go in time-out in some training center in Moscow and forget about me in a week.

They’re sending him to pick me up so he doesn’t fall apart. They’re sending him to pick me up so he gets to think he’s righteous, so he feels a little less bad, so he’s just that much happier and just that much healthier the next time they need him to fight and kill and win.

You’re a whore. The world spits on you or scrapes you off its shoe when it’s forced to acknowledge you as anything more than a statistic. He’s a cape. Everything is bent to the great task of keeping his pathetic half-life from imploding. He’s a miracle, a hero, an icon. There are statues of him. You? You never existed.

After tonight, you never existed.

Mrs. Eso stops me on the way into my apartment, asks me to come in for a cup of coffee. She says I look tired. She says I look like I could use someone to talk to. We talk a lot, she and I. Her husband works at some bank all day and her kids are off at college, and I guess she reminds me of them.

I need it right now. I do. She’s right, she’s always right. I wish I could say yes so badly.

I don’t. I tell her I’m busy, because if I open my mouth, the gigantic freezing heartless thing snapping at my heels will murder her too.

It ends with me. That’s what I repeat to myself as I unload my backpack onto the table. Cigarettes—my old favourite brand—real nice wine, an army surplus knife and a container of rat poison.

Strychnine. When I bought it thirty minutes ago, I asked what the active ingredient was and the clerk said it was strychnine. I know a lot about strychnine now. Read the whole Wikipedia page on the bus and filled in the gaps with what I remember from high school biology.

It grabs your muscles and makes them contract, spasm out of control. That includes the ones in your chest that keep you breathing and the ones in your heart that keep it beating. It’s not pretty, but it’s fast. Enough to kill a rat isn’t very much, but this container can probably kill about a thousand rats, so it’ll be enough for me.

And if that fails there’s the knife. God, I hope I don’t have to do that. I don’t even know if I’d have the nerve.

It ends with me. That’s what’s so horrible about it. This world is just going to keep on turning after I’m gone. Everything is just going to keep happening and happening. I get halfway through the bottle of wine trying to write a note and can’t get anything down, no matter how much I drink. Wait, why am I writing a note? It doesn’t matter. They’ll search my place, go through my phone. My phone. I can’t call anyone, they’ll check who I’ve called, they’ll kill them too.

I can’t call Marina and tell her I’m sorry, tell her it should’ve been us against the world, tell her she was right and I was wrong. I’ll never get to tell her that I never got over her, haven’t been able to ever since that first night we met. She’s going to hate me when I die. Later, she’ll find out what happened and she’ll cry her eyes out and she’ll say she’s sorry, alone, to herself, and I won’t deserve it. Won’t be there to hear it. It’s all going to happen. It’s all going to keep happening without me.

I can’t call Mom. I never told her what I do for a living. The worst part is that she wouldn’t even be ashamed of me. She used to tell me that if the whole world told me no, it was my job to say yes, that it was my job to believe in myself as much as she believed in me, because she wouldn’t always be there. It was me. It was always me keeping us apart. I’m the reason we only talk once a month. She’s going to wake up one morning and Eurofuture’s going to come to the door and they’re going to tell her… they’re going to tell her that I…

Oh, stop wallowing! For fuck’s sake, Valentyn, they’re almost here! What if Vasya gets here early, kicks down the door like the idiot hero he is, what then, huh!? What if you force him to set his powers off!? He could hit the whole building if he wanted to. Another massacre. Another massacre because you think you can conquer the world! You won’t be able to stop yourself from fighting. That’s who you are. You’re the kid who kicked and bit and pulled hair back in elementary school until no one picked on you, until no one would go near you. You’re the one who can’t take no for an answer. You’re the one who says yes.

But there are no more chances left. It’s unfair, but that’s life, Valentyn. It’s your life. Poison yourself drinking every night, gamble with your safety fucking strangers for cash, take five thousand euro from the fucking KGB! You are out of chances. You are out of places to hide. What are you going to do, make everyone else die for you? Run and run until there’s no more blood to spend, no more cops and capes and people you love to hide behind and they drag your thrashing body to the ground and fire the bolt through your skull anyway!? You coward!

Drink the poison and be done with it. It’s right there in the glass. You won’t even taste it through that top-shelf wine you bought to dull the pain. Go on. Die. It’s what’s left. It’s what’s offered you. It’s what you get. It’s what we’re giving you.

My trembling hands go to light up one last smoke, for old times’ sake. Maybe it’ll take the nerves off enough that I can down this thing in one go, die clean.

It comes to me like a dream. A ripple in the surface, the bubbling of the poison settling in the drink. Suddenly, I’m watching the Vltava ebb and flow again, drunk and fucked up and lost in the city but alone, alone and proud. Because it was me. It wasn’t anyone else. Six months ago, when I threw my last cig into the river, it was me who said yes. Yes to life. I was alone then too. Yes. Yes to life.

I toss the worthless hunk of paper and tar aside. My blood bubbles like the poison. My heart skips a beat. You should be the one drinking strychnine. You all should be the ones drinking strychnine, you Vasya and your ghoul of a handler and your armies and your country and the whole world that made you and cherishes you and cannot even see me.

Something’s happening to me. Something’s happening inside me. I can feel my blood screaming a poisonous tinnitus scream, raw noise multiplying until it’s all I can hear, like stepping out of the club onto a silent street and the world is dark and the world is loud and you don’t exist. Substance. Insensate. Particulate, dissolved.

Yes. Arrest yourself. Let the poison set in.

Swallow me, leviathan. Swallow me and choke.

#

He doesn’t warn me before opening the door, but I already know he’s there. I’ve known since he set foot in the building. I followed him up the stairs, through the halls, buried in the noise of him. Buried in the mind-waves spilling from his fragile skull that betray his every thought and motion.

If a Eurofuture super is here, he thinks, if anyone is here, I will have to kill them and I will have to kill my Valentyn. That’s okay, though, he thinks—there are other pretty boys in the world who I can pay to fuck me. Maybe one of them will even do it for free if I get my life together. I do want it, he thinks. That first time was nice.

Over me so quickly. But of course you are. I’m nothing. Untouchable. Poison.

He opens the door, carefully, gently.

“Valentyn!” he whispers loudly. “Come on, the car is here, we have to go.”

The car and six Soviet agents including his handler. Four pacing nervously in the lobby, two in the hallway behind him, all of them ready to shoot me if I resist. Their ice-white thoughts wrap the building in a dazzling blizzard of loud, ringing tyranny. It’s exhausting listening. It makes me sick. I’d much rather listen to you, Vasya.

I get up from the bed, languidly, weakly. The inside of my body feels like a tar slick. It nauseates me just to move. I hope I’ll get used to this. I tie my hair back and yawn dramatically. I was wearing my coat just a moment ago, but now there’s nothing on me but a pair of athletic shorts. I figure it’s about what he wants to see.

“What, you’re not going to spend any time with me first?” I ask, batting my eyelashes, playing up the damsel crap. It’s the reason he’s here in the first place, and feeding into it will make him—

Stride confidently across the dirty floor of my apartment, past the empty glass that used to hold delicious, life-affirming, vitality-giving poison.

Take my face in his hands.

Tell me that this is the only way that I’ll be safe. That I should come with him, because it’s my only chance.

Be a hero.

The pulse runs through me as he finishes speaking, liquid, squirming like worms under my skin. He gasps and pulls his hands away to see them coated with slime, green-black and thick and wet. It sticks to him as droplets of it slide off me; I grimace and adjust myself as I force my body back together. There. That’s better. It dissolves back into me if I don’t tell it to exist, if I don’t tell myself to be it.

“Ick, what’s this?” he asks. He goes to speak another word, but the sound catches in his throat. A moment later, he retches up yellow-black bile. He rushes to turn the lights on, and that’s when he sees the blood amid the contents of his stomach, bright red flecks staining the carpet. He looks around frantically as I stride towards him arrow-straight, a snake in motion.

He raises his hand to his face, and when he pulls it away, it’s stained with the blackening blood streaming from his nose and the corner of his eye. More of the stuff dribbles from the corner of his mouth, mixed with his spit. His pupils narrow. His eyes widen.

I clutch his throat and shove my face towards his.

“Did you think you were the only one?” I snarl, my voice acid. What a myopic, stupid, selfish, childish idea. That yours is all the power there is. That no one else can trigger.

Fear floods him. In about two seconds he’s going to turn this entire room into a one hundred below zero hellscape. Well, not the whole room. There’s one part of it he can’t touch; his powers won’t let him.

My finger touches the blood pouring down his face, and my body begins to turn.

Dissolve!

The room freezes solid in an instant as wave after wave of killing cold hurtle outwards from his body, paint splitting and pipes bursting and electronics exploding as metal contracts. I follow his mind-waves outwards to the places I knew they’d go, making sure he isn’t overshooting, isn’t turning the whole building into an ice sculpture. He didn’t plan to. He didn’t want to.

He isn’t. He didn’t. He’s only aiming for me. Keeping control, even as his flesh spasms and his organs liquefy inside him and every nerve in his body screams out in terror. I can feel it; I can feel it happening to him.

I can feel it because I’ve found a place to dissolve into. A sanctuary. That same-old same-old slow-running river. I course through him with every heartbeat.

He can’t hit me in here. He’s warmer on the inside.

He screams for help, not knowing his agents are already in the room. There’s too much blood in his eyes. His voice turns to retching as he vomits up pieces of his stomach. It turns to choking. It falls still.

All that fear, that blind panic, and he didn’t hurt a soul. There’s the dignity I couldn’t find in him. It’s splattered all over my floor, pooling underneath him, red and black.

The guilt wracks me instantly. You’d think it’d wait for the adrenaline to go down—maybe I eat that too, on top of poison. I’m still learning. It nearly makes me lose my focus; I nearly turn human again right here in front of the terrified agents and their guns.

I’m a monster.

The one they deserve.

I burst out of the pool of ruined Vasya and hurl myself at the closest agent like a wave. It’s his handler, of course, the Ukrainian. I should still be stronger than her. I reform myself behind her, leaving her soaked with blood and poisoned from my touch, and go to wrestle the gun out of her panicked hands.

The tar slick fights me. My muscles and my nerves are made of water—no, something even more unwieldy, vodka or mercury. Viscous. Weak. Brittle. She pries her weapon out of my grip easily and elbows me in the face. Something squelches. My nose bleeds greenish sludge down the front of my face.

That’s when the other one gets his bearings enough to pick a target and shoot. He’s picked me, of course, but I’m still between him and his boss—but that won’t stop him. She’s about to tell him to take the shot, feeling the poison set in, and he’s about to obey. I’m almost human like this, on the outside. I’m not bulletproof. I’ll die.

It all floods in. His aim, the next few moments, my gruesome anticlimactic death, failure. Every dream my mother ever had for me, every dream I ever had for myself, spattered across my frozen walls with the inside of my head.

This is it. This is what it means to say yes to life. The complacency has been hollowed out of me, harrowed from my heart by this flood of terror. No, not terror. It’s not terror anymore. It’s too detached for that. I simply know. I know what awaits me if I hesitate.

The moment crystallizes me. The world stands still. Held with me in the amber of what I’ve become is a gigantic bright feeling so close I can feel it warming my skin.

I want to live.

I liquefy. He shoots and her body goes limp at the impact. He shoots again and again, dumping his magazine into the nameless poisonous thing in front of him. Brass and lead smash through my green-black slime-body but I remain whole. It barely hurts. The gun clicks empty. I solidify as he struggles to reload with his shaking hands, then watch as he clutches his stomach and falls to his knees. The toxin is working. It’s instinct now. A killing touch. One drop of Vasya’s blood infused with me, splashed onto his face in the scuffle just now—that’s all it took. The short-term exposure limit of the toxin that is me must be miniscule. A whisper.

How many drops are in me? More than a thousand. Yes, more than that. Maybe enough for the world.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel safe.

I glance at the handler. She stares at me with her furious steel eyes, a contender, as though a rematch is coming. She stares even as the veins in her neck turn black before my eyes. I look away. I can’t stand seeing courage from these people.

The man crawls around, blood pouring from his face, delirious with terror. That’s better. Downstairs, the other agents are scurrying around preparing for the worst.

I pick up the gun—what a thing to be holding—and finish loading it with my clumsy civilian hands. These are used to handling more delicate parts. I nearly trap my finger in the mechanism.

I point once to test it. Wait, searching for brainwaves, to make sure nobody in the next room is in the way of the bullet. Shoot. Shit, that’s fucking loud!

Russian shouting echoes up the stairwell. I contemplate the gun.

How hard could it be?

A quarter minute blurs by. It faintly registers, somewhere amid all the furious thoughts headed my way and the roaring echoes of gunfire from my hand, that I’m naked. Huh. I knew clothes didn’t shapeshift with you, but it’s strange all the same.

Whatever. Who hasn’t seen it? I crack a smile.

At the bottom of the stairwell, the final agent is waiting for me behind a chair in the lobby. He pops out to fire, but before he can take aim I’ve already predicted precisely where his brain stem is going to be and put a bullet through it. Or… no. I didn’t do it. The terror did. I saw what he was going to do to me. I reacted. Instinct. It barely feels real. Scary, loud, and then quiet and safe. Somewhere behind me, another person I don’t remember killing slides to the ground with a wet thud.

I glance over to the night manager’s office. I can hear his thoughts in there as he frantically calls the police. Let’s see. Last time he called them for a disturbance at his building, it took them twenty-five minutes to arrive. That’s what he’s thinking.

That gives me time to pack.

I slip an envelope full of cash—not gonna need it anymore—through Mrs. Eso’s mail slot on my way out. I think I managed to scrawl ‘get yourself something nice’ on it, but I don’t really know, not through the adrenaline. My hands were shaking too. At least they weren’t covered in blood. It all just wicks off me into the flooring when I shift.

When the police arrive, they’re all going to be looking in the direction of my building, so I look both ways—like I need to anymore—and cross the street. I stand there and pretend to be a bystander for a while until my heart rate goes down.

Every mind on the street, everyone woken up by the gunfire who came out to watch—they all meld into one gigantic storm, and then it’s a squall, and then it’s a cloud. The sun comes out in their minds as the world becomes safe again. The police are here. The heavens are secure. The night is back to normal.

I blend into it, a particle, a grain of arsenic dissolving in an ocean of pure dark water.

#

“No! You don’t get to hang up on me. You let me think you were dead for a week, remember!?” Marina says from the other end of the line, laughing.

“No, I mean it, I really am about to meet a client. A lucrative one.” I say pointedly.

I should apologize, but what am I going to say? That I slipped off to Mom’s house in the countryside, the one that smells of rosemary and fabric softener all the time, and ate home-cooked meals and watched soap operas with the only person who ever really believed in me? I can’t tell her about that.

It was too embarrassing. I gave Mom the strongest hug I could muster and she still made fun of it, told me I needed more protein in my diet, not knowing that beneath the skin my nerves and muscles have turned to thick dark currents of slime. I got up late every night like a kid sneaking out, ravenous, to drink all the bleach in the house until that big tub of pesticide finally arrived. She thought she was going crazy.

No. It’s too much. And Marina doesn’t deserve it. I’m the one out to conquer the world—let her think her old flame’s moved on to bigger and better things.

At least, the bigger part is true. Better… I’m brave enough now to admit that doesn’t matter. It was always you and the world, Valentyn, always a fight, only now you can win. It was always whatever you could seize and steal and claw back, pleasure and life and joy. The power to wake up in the morning with a smile on your face.

That’s the most incredible power of all. That’s the purest, kindest, most miraculous gift of all those it gave me, that shuddering thing inside me that blasted me to noise and ashes that delirious night I almost let the world win.

Wake with a smile. Meet the day fearless. The world is yours.

The client moves so fast he almost flickers. There’s care in his every movement, the care of a person who’s broken things so many times before he’s lost count. He’s clad in hardened energy. His skin glows. I’ve seen the videos of him hurtling through the sky like a comet, swelling like a tidal wave, shielding hundreds with his stoic light.

He illuminates his whole world. Except for this. Except for me. The light refuses to touch me, like it always has.

“You are a professional, right?” He cracks a smile. He must be worried about someone finding out what he’s doing. Girlfriend, probably. Seen it a dozen times before.

That means he hasn’t told anyone he hired me. But I already knew that, didn’t I?

“Better than that. I specialize in supers. Hence the rates.” I say back, blending my voice into his, dissolving into his shadow.

“Oh? What, it’s not just secrecy driving your price up? Now you’ve got me curious. What do you give us that… anyone else can’t?”

I bite my lip and smile back at him; it’s a look I used to practice in the mirror when I was starting out. Melts their heart every time.

“Humility,” I whisper.