Being the Bad Guy, Page 2

break out in a month or two- like the last half dozen times.

  If the Order’s defeat let me feel a bit superior, it underscored the insanity of what I was attempting. If the city was crawling with so many heroes that the Order couldn’t complete a simple bank heist, how was I going to do something epic on my own?

  I threw myself into research. Intel and preparation, not strength or super-abilities, were what separated the great criminals from the merely good.

  I kept track of all the news, tracked which heroes were where and doing what. I was a member of several online forums where villains discussed heroes’ potential weaknesses, true identities, and that sort of thing.

  By sheer chance I came across a little nugget in my morning newspaper, and a plan started to come together in my mind.

  In about a week, Mayor Thomas was holding a ceremony to honor the Worldbeaters as the hero team of the year, thanks to their triumph over the galactic threat Vampirius, the Planet Sucker.

  Had that been everything in the article, I would have rolled my eyes and moved on to the next column; but it went on to detail the extravagant, hand-crafted work being donated for an award by Lillian Jewelers.

  A custom trophy of that caliber couldn’t be quickly remade and with its design leaked in the article, people would know if it was replaced with a sham. Stealing that award would be a message that even the city’s mightiest heroes were susceptible to the criminal whims of Nightstar.

  I wouldn’t even sell the expensive trophy or keep it on my mantle as a conversation piece. No, I’d send it over to one of the major media outlets with a plaque attached that said “Nightstar: Criminal Mastermind of the Year.”

  Laughing, I googled the address of the nearest Things Remembered.

  That was putting the cart before the horse though. I began scouring the blogosphere, specifically Worldbeaters fanboy sites, for more news. From there, it was a slow drudge through building blueprints and security company contracts as well as a couple of calls to old business associates. I also made a few enquires of my own, sending emails from some of my false identities pretending to be a political journalist and then an art professor at a fictitious college and trolling for more information from the mayor’s staff and the jewelers commissioned with creating the award.

  As the details trickled in, I could feel my sense of emptiness slowly giving way to a feeling of excitement.

  @ @ @

  The break-in itself was something of an anti-climax.

  Though the trophy was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the mayor hadn’t bothered arranging any special security for it. That made a rough kind of sense, I guess. What idiot would be stupid enough to steal something that would set the Worldbeaters on his tail?

  I don’t mean to imply that the Lillian Jewelers home office was undefended. Every possible entrance was alarmed, every room motion-detectored, and there was a small three-man security team roaming the building.

  None of the three were super powered though; they were just ex-cops. Cloaked in shadows, I snuck into a side alley and scaled the side of the building. The adhesive gloves and footpads that I’d borrowed a year ago from Hijack and never returned made it easy.

  The windows all had dual alarms. A circuit connecting the bottom of the window to the frame was tripped whenever the window was opened. Similarly, a charge was run through the glass of the windows, disturbed when the window was cracked or broken.

  Fortunately, the artisans of Lillian’s had not been satisfied with a boring, crudely functional building and the structure had several octagonal stained glass windows printed with intricate designs. These did not open and only gave a warning if broken.

  One of these decorative windows was on the third floor, facing the alley. I iguana-ed over to it and lit my blowtorch.

  Careful to leave the glass undisturbed, I cut through the window frame above and below the wiring for the alarm system. I lowered the flame’s intensity and heated the untouched metal just enough that I would be able to distort it.

  I was able to twist the now malleable frame back almost ninety degrees so that the window laid flat horizontally.

  The gap created was not wide, but I slipped through into the room. This would have set off the room’s motion detector, but motion detectors work on the simple premise of rays of infrared light projected across a room towards a receptor. When the light’s path is blocked, the detector goes off.

  For me, this was no problem. I simply bent the infrared light around me and then back onto its original path as I moved. It helped that I could see in infrared, of course.

  My main concern had been that one of the guards would happen by and see me while I was making my entry. Now that I was inside, I was sure that I could avoid them easily.

  I made my way toward a back stairway leading to the first floor workroom where the award sat awaiting a final polish before the ceremony. Out of tune whistling announced the approach of a night watchman, but I slipped quietly into a convenient office until he had passed.

  The trophy was not hard to find, being by far the largest of the pieces on display. I was tempted to toss a few other things into my pockets, but decided there would be more style points if I only stole the award.

  I didn’t have any fancy solutions to the alarm on the display case, so I traced some wiring back to the fuse box in a back room and unscrewed the siren’s fuse.

  No sooner had I smashed the case and lifted the award than the wall opposite me exploded.

  I cringed, expecting a hero—a strong, stupid one like Brickman; hazy on the cost benefit ratio of destroying someone’s business to save their wares.

  The form that slowly strode through the ensuing cloud of mortar dust was instantly familiar; but it belonged to the last person I had expected to see that night.

  “RiotGyrl? What are you doing here?” I had a hundred more questions, but I didn’t get a chance to ask them. Karen crossed the space between us in three quick strides and her shoulder hit me like a sixteen-wheeler as her hands deftly separated the trophy from mine.

  I was thrown across the room, shattering a window and setting off an alarm.

  “Hello, Nightstar,” Karen said. It was almost like there was some strange parasite controlling her body; the high-boned face and its expressions were the same, but the warmth and emotion that had always animated them when we spoke were gone. “I’m taking this. Don’t make me hurt you more than I have to.”

  I shrugged.

  “Look, that’s cool. I don’t really want it. I just want my name in the papers that I was one of the ones who stole it. You can keep it, fence it, whatever. We’ll call it a two-person job but you can keep all of the profits.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t want to appear associated with you any way.”

  Ouch.

  The overhead lights flashed to life as two security guards burst through the door, guns firing. Fortunately, they weren’t expecting me to be sprawled uselessly in a corner. Their first, wild shots missed Karen and I filled their eyes with darkness so that they were fighting blind. She delivered a fist to each of their temples and they slumped to the floor.

  Karen had put down the award to do this, and while she was occupied with the officers, I snatched it.

  She dove for me, shrieking as I flashed brilliant light in her eyes. She had always hated it when I did that. Her blind lunge was almost on target, and she got a hand on the edge of my cape. I tugged myself free of her superior strength, but skidded on broken glass and fell over a cabinet.

  Keeping hold of the trophy, I rolled away to the side; a good decision since she dove immediately toward the sound of my fall.

  “Give it back!”

  I crawled under a worktable, lessened the glare in her eyes, and constructed a hazy shadow by bending the light on her other side. She shook her head like an angry bull and leapt towards it, roaring in frustration when her fist flew right through and the rest of her followed to rebound off of the wall.

  “Why do you want th
is thing, anyway?” I asked. “I already said you could have the money and you refused. You’re also welcome to any of the other trinkets here; they’re probably worth more in aggregate.”

  Speaking to her was obviously going to pose some danger. She didn’t leap this time, but kicked the frame of a shattered display case in my direction. Fortunately, it deflected off the table I was cowering under without doing me any harm.

  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, the third security officer sneaking up behind us. I blinded him as well. When he stumbled, Karen was on him in a second. I watched as he absorbed all of her affection for me.

  I considered playing dead at that point, but sightlessly molesting the body of the officer to search for the trophy, she soon realized her error.

  “Nightstar! Hand it over now and I may leave some of your bones unbroken. This is your last warning.”

  I took cover behind a sturdy looking old metal file cabinet and went on the verbal offensive.

  “What’s your deal?” I yelled back. “If you’re not here for the money, you’re here for the fame, but that’s never been your style.”

  Which was true, Karen had never