Carrie Vaughn - After the Golden Age

Without a word, she brushed past him and left. She felt his gaze staring after her and had to smile a little. Let him wonder who she was.

The car was a chauffeured Cadillac. The formally dressed driver held the door open for her, closed it behind her, then climbed behind the wheel and pulled out of the alley into the nighttime streets. She settled back against the leather seat. The back windows were tinted to the point of being opaque, preventing her from marking their route.

Too late to back out now. That was okay. This was going to go fine.

Eventually, the car tilted, slanting forward as it traveled down a ramp. They seemed to continue downward for a very long time. For all their efforts, the Olympiad hadn’t found the Destructor’s most recent headquarters. She could go back and tell them: underground. Far underground.

She could never go back.

After parking, the driver let her out into a dimly lit garage-type structure and escorted her through a door. Again, only a few dim lights showed the way. The Destructor either wanted to create as creepy an effect as possible, or save on electricity bills.

He probably pirated his power off the grid anyway.

The corridor ended in a wide doorway. The driver gestured her through, staying behind.

Ahead, an old man sat at a vast mahogany table. It was the only furniture or decoration in a slate-colored room. His hair was thinned to nothing, and he peered through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. A half-dozen computer monitors sat on the desk at regular intervals. He spent a little time at each of them, in no particular order: he looked at one, tapped a few keys on the single keyboard in front of him, looked at another, typed again.

Studious, a scientist, he was planning his next act of mass chaos.

Her stomach lurched; she swallowed back a surge of nausea. This man had tried to rip her mind apart a year ago. This man cared nothing for her. This man was a monster.

The enemy of her enemy was her friend. If she had a place in the world, this was it. She shrugged her jacket partway off, exposing her shoulders.

“Hi,” she said.

Not looking up, the Destructor said, “It’s the famous Celia West. What do you want?”

She’d practiced this in her mind a hundred times. The way she’d walk, the look in her eyes, calm and cool. She was powerful, in her own way. Step by step, she moved toward him, her heels clicking slowly on the tile floor.

When she got to his table, she half-sat on it, her skirt riding up one thigh. One of the monitors was in the way. She swiveled it aside, so he could see. He looked up.

“I can tell you about the Olympiad. Their headquarters, their computer systems, procedures. Just about anything you want to know.”

“And what do you want?”

“A place here. I want to be a part of this.”

For a long minute, they regarded one another. If she kept her mind a blank, she wouldn’t look away.

He said, “You’re only here to aggravate your parents. While I commend the endeavor, I have no use for you.”

It occurred to her that if she had a knife right now, she could slit his throat. Wouldn’t her parents be shocked and impressed? Except they didn’t kill. Eschewed killing as a crime.

She just couldn’t win.

He added, “The Olympiad has its headquarters in the penthouse of West Plaza. I know the secret identities of every member of the Olympiad—as you know. I’m naturally immune to Mentis’s telepathy. Everything you think you know, I already know.”

The worst that could happen, he’d just kill her. Lock her up, torture her, finish her off. And the thing was, she didn’t care. At least she could say she tried. If this didn’t work, she just didn’t care. She had nothing left.

She couldn’t let him see that. She only showed him blank. Like Arthur would do.

His lips pressed into a tight, unfeeling smile. “On the other hand, keeping you around might prove amusing.”

Set the hook, reel him in. As if she were actually having an impact on him. She’d imagined herself doing this, thinking it would give her some power over him. Imagined how she might possibly win some power for herself in this world, where men flew and women played with fire.

She stalked around the table. It was a long walk, it seemed like. She’d always pictured him in a huge leather executive chair, the kind that dominated a room, massive and luxurious. Like the kind her father had. Instead, he had a simple office chair, flat and dark, with a low back. It didn’t even have wheels. He perched at the edge of it, watching her progress.

When she reached his chair, she put her left hand on his desk, her right on the chair back, just behind his thin, dark-suited shoulder. Not touching it. Leaning forward, keeping her eyes open and looking, she kissed him on the lips. It was just a press; he didn’t respond. His lips were dry, frozen. She pulled back, waiting for a response.

“Don’t do that again,” he said. He pointed to a door behind her. So much for her vast powers of seduction.

In the days that followed, she spent a lot of time sitting on tables at the periphery while he plotted, planned, schemed, whatever. She didn’t pay much attention. He ignored her. Kept her around because it might be amusing. She fetched coffee sometimes. At his command, all his henchmen ignored her as well. She might have had a little fun, otherwise. They all treated her like a kid.

His latest plan—bombs set to destroy government buildings all over the city—was nearing fruition. She could stop this, she occasionally considered. Sabotage the mechanism or call her parents. Redeem herself.

She kind of wanted to see how they stopped it on their own. It would be interesting, watching from the other side.

She perched in the window of the skyscraper where he worked that day, looking down on the canyons of a tiny cardboard city. Cars crawled, people were only specks of dirt shifting around. Everything looked flat.

“I read what the papers say about me. Do you?” The Destructor spoke to her for the first time in weeks. He stood beside her, gazing out the window with her, amusement brightening his features.

“Lots of speculation about why I do what I do. Am I mad? Disturbed? Was I abused as a child? Why am I so bent on destruction? There is so much they don’t consider, you know. They don’t consider how much worse I could be.”

She quirked a smile.

“You’ve been watching me. I think you’ve been taking notes. If you wanted to be worse than me, what would you do? What could be worse than mass destruction?”

Mass destruction sounded pretty good to her. It was partly why she was here. She’d never been able to create or save. Maybe she could destroy. Except she didn’t seem to be very good at that, either.

“The pundits are wrong about me,” he said. “I’m essentially lazy. Mass destruction is for the lazy. It’s not difficult. Anyone can crash an airplane. But using an airplane to destroy a cultural icon? That creates despair. That’s where the real power lies. In symbols. Money is easy to steal. But a rare gem? A unique painting? These things are truly worthwhile. People will die for them when they will not die for money. So tell me, what can be worse than mass destruction?”

She said, “Specific loss. You choose your target.”

He smiled, and she felt as if she’d been rewarded. “How much worse for your parents, to turn you into their next great adversary. Better I had destroyed you last year. How does that sound?”

“Like you’re planning to use me to get your own revenge. Again.”

“Maybe when the time comes I’ll let you push the button,” he said.

SHE never got around to ordering dinner. Too much ice cream made her lose her appetite. She didn’t even pull herself off the sofa to go to bed. It was much easier to flip channels until she found a decade-old action movie playing on cable. It looked more dated than it should have, and the good bits of dialogue had been edited out. When that movie ended, another one started, and she stared at the TV until she fell asleep.