A Bad Girl's Guide to Super Heroes

Chapter One

Running with Scissors

Mirage Wroth jerked from sleep to full consciousness, her eyes snapping open to scan the strange room. Small. Narrow. A box with four white walls. Above her, a high, narrow window leaked moonlight into the room while the opposite wall held a sturdy door with another high window. Yellow light from the hall shimmered off the thin bands of metal reinforcing the heavy glass.

A cell.

Where was she? Did it matter?

Her awareness seemed to stutter, like a poorly cut movie, jerking her from moment to moment with no transitions. Disoriented, she twisted to look for more clues, the movement and a chilled sweat making the thin cotton scrubs she was wearing cling to her legs.

No, not scrubs. Not medical. Institutional.

Her vision fractured into prisms and she squeezed her eyes shut, breathing slowly before prying them open again. Was she drugged? She felt quickly along her arms and throat for IVs, needle marks, but found no evidence.

Escape. The whisper came from inside her mind. It was her own voice, but there was something off about it. It was too confident, too sure, when she felt nothing but confusion and doubt. An outside force speaking in her own mind, in her own voice.

Kevin.

Mirage shuddered and quickly rolled off the bed and slid under it, hiding from whatever cameras might be watching her.

No. Not Kevin. She’d killed Kevin. Hadn’t she? Disjointed memories tripped over one another, overlapping in impossible ways. Breaking Kevin’s mind. Slitting Kevin’s throat. Listening to him scream. Banging his head hard against the floor. Yes, that one. No, strangling him, smothering him, a silent death.

Were they memories? Fantasies? He’d… done something. She shook her head, trying to shake some order into her thoughts. Why couldn’t she remember clearly? Kevin had tricked her, used her, bending her mind until she didn’t know where she began and he ended anymore, but she hadn’t been the one he wanted. Lucien. He’d been after her brother. Another fragment of memory surfaced—Lucien surrounded by Kevin’s mind-controlled hordes, swarmed by them, too many, even for a man with superstrength.

Had Kevin killed Lucien? Another cold shudder ripped through her body. Why wasn’t Lucien here? He would never abandon her. He would never leave her in a place like this and no force on Earth could keep Lucien from getting to her if he lived. He was too strong. He’d broken her out of Area Nine, the supervillain prison. She remembered that much. He would have broken her out of here. Wherever here was.

Escape. The word came again. Sounding more right this time.

Escape and find Lucien. Escape and kill Kevin. Escape and shake the effects of whatever had her memories looking like a mirror that had been shattered and put back together in the wrong order, rough-edged pieces refracting back on one another in awkward, impossible ways.

The sound of a key in the lock was eerily loud, ringing in her ears, and every muscle in her body tensed in readiness at the sound. What fools held her that they thought they could enter her room with impunity? Or was she the foolish one? Had they given her something to inhibit her abilities? Were her disjointed memories only a side effect of some new power-suppressing drug?

Mirage held herself still under the bed, waiting, hoping to gather more information to fill in the massive blanks in her head. The door opened slowly, soundlessly, and a pair of legs entered her vision. Sturdy black boots, dark jeans, and the trailing edge of a lab coat.

Mirabelle, I know you’re in here. The voice was calm and soothing, with a careful lack of fear or hesitation, like he was talking to a feral animal and trying not to startle her with any sudden moves. I’m Dr. Eisenmann, remember? I’m here to help you. You can show yourself to me, Mirabelle. You’re safe here.

Mirage ignored his claims of her safety, focusing instead on his urge for her to show herself. He hadn’t even tried to glance under the bed. He wasn’t looking, because he didn’t believe he would find her. Dr. Eisenmann clearly thought her powers were still fully operational.

It was all the go-ahead she needed.

Mirage reached out with her gift, the one part of her mind that was working properly, and plunged into the good doctor’s perceptions. She couldn’t read his thoughts—her father had always been disappointed that her gifts hadn’t developed in that direction—but she could control what he thought he saw, felt, heard, smelled, all of it.

He was hers, for as long as she could keep her focus tight. She let him see her, a decoy version, standing across the room beneath the window, innocent and immobile, as her real body slipped out from under the bed and moved toward the door.

What do you want? Fake Mirage snapped.

Eisenmann turned toward the window, tucking his chin in an oddly submissive gesture. I only want to help you, Mirabelle. You’re confused.

Where am I?

Trident Labs. The Mental Rehabilitation wing. You checked yourself in after… do you remember Kevin?

Mirage made her fake self give a jerky nod—it was the little gestures, the details, that were the trickiest to replicate when she doubled herself, but Eisenmann gave no sign that her illusion was anything but perfect.

Prolonged exposure to Mind Benders like Kevin can have lasting effects. We’re trying to help you counter them.

She reached the door, more than a little surprised when the knob turned smoothly beneath her hand. Why hadn’t he locked it behind him?

You’re on the hero side now, Mirabelle, she heard the good doctor say as she slipped out into the hall and something dark shuddered through her soul.

Now she knew he lied. The heroes were the bastards who had stood by and let her world shatter without lifting a finger. She would never join them.

She closed the door silently and twisted the keys he’d left in the deadbolt on the hall side, locking the doctor in, but keeping up the mirage of her other self in case he had a way to sound the alarm.

Escape. The whisper in the back of her mind was back, insidious and dark. Was it her whisper, or could it be something Kevin had planted there?

A strange double beep sounded over the PA system and Mirage jumped. Shit. She’d forgotten about security monitoring. Yet another sign something was very wrong with her. She would never make such a careless, rookie mistake if she were in her right mind. She dropped the illusion on Eisenmann and threw out a blanket perception-deadening wave, pushing it out through the entire complex. It was hurried and clumsy, but she didn’t have time for targeted finesse.

Wroth protocol implemented. Lock-down commenc— The soldier-sharp voice over the PA broke off as the wave finally reached him, sending him into the catatonic daze she held over the entire facility—but not before he implemented his damn protocol.

Electronic doors slammed home, sealing the hall as the fluorescent lights went out, replaced by irregularly flickering red emergency lights. An intermittent siren sounded at odd intervals. Damn it. They knew what they were doing. The more they changed the environment, the less predictable they made it, the harder it was for a chameleon like her to maintain the illusion covering it all.

Mirage ran to the end of the hall and tested the door, but the handle didn’t even rattle under her hands. She cursed softly. Closing her eyes, she sent another message through the dozens of minds she held in sensory-deprived thrall, unable to specifically target the one with his finger on the lockdown button. False alarm. Undo it. Nothing to see here.

She was dizzy and sweating with the effort of maintaining her hold on so many minds when the siren finally cut off. Fluorescent lights blinked back on and the door popped open.

Mirage ran.

If she could just get outside before her powers burned out, she’d be home free. After she was out of the building, all she had to do was make herself invisible to whoever saw her—that was much less taxing. She’d run to Lucien’s. He would know what to do. If he’s alive…

She didn’t know how many wrong turns she took, but finally she tripped across a distinctive glassed-in atrium. She stumbled a step, startled to see she really was in Trident Labs after all.

The labs were neutral territory, the Switzerland of supervillain-superhero confrontations, espousing science above all, so why would they be holding her prisoner? It didn’t make sense.

Nothing made sense tonight.

Mirage threw open the double doors and raced into the parking lot, pushing herself, her muscles burning. When she was a hundred feet from the building, she let herself drop the illusion and collapse to her knees, the sweat coating her skin chilling in the cold night air as she tried to catch her breath.

More memories surfaced, tangled and disorienting. Lucien shaking hands with Eisenmann blended and morphed into Lucien being blown to pieces by an Apocalyptum bomb. Apocalyptum… a substance lethal even to supers and developed by only one company. Trident Labs. Was it Kevin who had killed her brother? Or Eisenmann? Were they working together?

Rage and frustration made the fragmenting worse. Her head throbbed, pain the only constant as everything else in her mind shifted and rolled like clothes in a dryer. What was happening to her? She would worry she was losing her mind, but all evidence pointed to it already being gone.

A figure dropped out of the sky, landing hard enough to make the ground beneath her quake. Mirage froze. He was huge, menacing, dressed in black leather and bad attitude—and her heart flew to her throat at the sight of him.

Lucien?

Her brother crouched in front of her, his eyes wary. Why would they be wary? Why was he so tentative with her? So damn cautious.

What are you doing out here, Belle?

Another form floated down from above, alighting delicately about fifteen feet away. It was dark, but even with the limited moonlight filtering through the clouds, Mirage recognized the woman with a giant red D emblazoned across the chest of her black supersuit.

Darla Powers. DynaGirl. She must have flown Lucien here. Why would a hero do that for Luc?

DynaGirl folded her arms, watching Mirage with an expression that wasn’t even a distant cousin of friendly.

What are you doing with DynaGirl? Mirage snarled, unable to keep the belligerence out of her voice when she wanted nothing more than to scream, Why are you with Miss Goodie Goodie when you should be protecting me? Since when did Lucien hang out with the princess of the superhero set?

At her question, Lucien’s face shuttered, but she saw the flash of disappointment before it fell into resignation. What had she done to disappoint him?

Luc?

Lucien took her hand, squeezing it tight—but not hard enough to hurt. He was always careful of his strength. I’m here, Belle.

Her broken mirror shattered again, the pieces scattering until she didn’t even have a distorted illusion of who she was anymore. She was a blank slate, which was much lonelier than she’d imagined it would be. Luc? What’s happening?

She shivered and he slipped off his jacket, draping the warm leather around her shoulders. Come inside, Belle. I’ll explain everything.

He nodded toward Trident Labs and Mirage jerked back, stumbling and sprawling gracelessly to the ground as something primal and irrational inside her rebelled. "No. They killed you."

Lucien flinched, his eyes unspeakably sad. No, they didn’t, Belle. I’m fine. See? Eisenmann is trying to help you. You came to Trident of your own volition so they could help you.

No, she murmured, repeating it over and over again, her voice barely audible. She started shaking her head and found she couldn’t stop, though she wasn’t even sure what she was protesting anymore.

Come on. Lucien guided her to her feet and Mirage let him tuck her against his side, tugging her toward the building. Nothing felt right, not even her brother’s familiar arm across her shoulders, but she went along with him. Docile. Dazed.

DynaGirl fell into step beside them, giving Lucien a supportive little smile. What was she doing here? Was he with DynaGirl now?