Every Day is Like Doomsday (13 page)

Elliot was a giant moron. He was a geek, a dork,
a nerd and many other words that Innya didn’t know in
English. But as she watched him stare at his scratched up
desk and try to muster up the courage to suggest anything
to the group she felt a little sorry for him. She would
never have said anything but he was growing on her. She
felt protective of him and she had to admit, though only
to herself, that only part of it was because she was being
paid to be protective of him.

Elliot looked up at her over the bowed, conspiratorial heads of their peers and managed a lukewarm smile.
She did not return the gesture and Elliot eventually looked
back down at his section of desk. He may have been a
fungus, a worm, a loser, but he was her fungus, worm and
loser and she could shape him into anything she wanted
him to be. It was like playing God, except if she was God
she wouldn’t have had to worry about him dying because
she could have just brought him back to life with a flash
of her godlike boobs or something like that.

“What do you think, New Meat?” asked Dopple.
The question itself wasn’t unnerving; it was the fact that
Dopple had asked it in Elliot’s voice. That was his thing,
and his thing could be very useful in the future especially
since, like all boys, he was lamentably easy to manipulate.

“I don’t like the idea of being the lookout. Even if
we get to the bank first I’ll be alone in front of the vault
and when the other groups show up they could take me
out. Why can’t I come inside with you guys?”

“Because you’re going to take out the guards,” said
Innya. “Dopple will disable the security system and the
twins will run in and grab what they can and get out
in the 15 second window they will have before the grid
comes back up.”

“Why only 15 seconds?” Dopple asked. “I can keep
it down for longer if you need it.”
“Fifteen seconds will be enough for us,” said The
Twins in unison.
Elliot frowned. “What will you do then?” he asked
Innya.
“Supervise.” Innya said.
“Sounds good,” said Twin One.
“To us,” finished Twin two. They were sitting so
close together they were practically sitting in each other’s
laps. And they were holding hands. It was creepy.
Before she knew what she was saying Innya blurted
out, “Do you two believe in incest, or what? I mean, you’re
always touching each other and you never leave each others’
sides. So what’s up here? Do I need to worry that in the
middle of the action the stress will turn you on and you’ll
disrupt our plan so that you can get pelvic in the vault?”
About halfway through her speech their jaws

dropped. By the end they had let go of each other’s hands.
Elliot stared at Innya, “How could you ask such a thing?”
he asked.

“No,you know what? I’m very curious about you two
as well. What’s up with the twins thing?” asked Dopple.
“Shut up,” Innya said to Dopple. “Don’t just agree
with me because you think you’ll get into my pants. I’m
not looking for agreement; I’m looking for obedience.
Elliot here has a better chance at boning me than you do.”
Elliot stifled a grin as Dopple turned angry eyes in his
direction. Oooh, Innya thought, this was going to be fun.
The Twins bowed their heads. One of them said,
“We are sorry. We’ve just always been close.”
The other one added, “We want to win just as badly
as you do and we promise not to interrupt the robbery.”
“Good,” said Innya, “And for G.O.D.’s sake stop
completing each other’s thoughts. It’s not that it’s annoying; it’s that it’s
really
annoying.
The Twins looked as if they were going to cry. Innya
studied them carefully, their emotions, their confusion,
and decided that she was happy that she didn’t give a shit
about most things. If nothing else it seemed less damp.
No one said anything for an extremely awkward
couple of moments and so Innya announced, “Fine. I
suppose that’s it for the day. We’ll come back tomorrow
for fine tuning and maybe run some drills.”
Dopple and The Twins left, looking in turn both
dejected and destroyed.
“You were really hard on them,” said Elliot. She was
ready to attack him but then realized that he was simply
stating a fact, not judging her. Interesting. Very interesting. Either his hormones were overpowering his sense of
decency or there was a little Villainy in him yet.
To test it she asked, “So, have you tried to contact
your father since the newscast?”
Elliot’s face darkened immediately, as if someone
had thrown a shroud over him. The darkness was kind of
hot. “No. My number is still blocked to the house, all of
his cell phones, and his office in Washington. I can’t get
through to explain what happened. It’s bullshit.”
Innya smiled, “Good,” she said.

Innya woke, stretched and rued yet another day
where the world was not at her feet and she had to get up
and deal with people who were so obviously beneath her
in every way. She got out of bed and avoided the piles of
clothing and junk food wrappers on her way to the closet.
Luckily, her obligatory roommate had popped off for a
midnight snack two days after Innya’s arrival and had
never returned so she didn’t have to deal with anyone’s
mess but her own.

Today was another big day of plotting and scheming. They had spent the week of cancelled classes in their
group working on their plan for the robbery and still had
only the barest idea of how it was going to work.

I am surrounded by mental midgets, she thought as
she looked over to where her particularly idiotic roommate had once slept. She peeled off her clothes from the
night before and threw them on the floor, then pulled
a clingy, low-cut, black shirt over her head and slipped
on a pair of tight, black jeans. Then she went into the
bathroom to fix her hair and makeup. She was ready long
before she was scheduled to meet up with her team so she
decided to grab something to munch on from the vending machines outside the cafeteria beforehand.

But when she opened the door she saw a plain
envelope taped to it. She removed it and stepped back
inside her room, closing her door for privacy. She opened
it and felt her eyes bulge as she pulled out a wad of cash,
more than the Dean had given her to protect Elliot, and
that had been a respectable sum of money. It also contained a letter, which she scowled at for several minutes
as if she expected the words to change if she read them
often enough.

Of course,even as the money spilled into her lap and
she folded the letter and put it and the money into a thin
box that she kept between her mattress and her box spring
she knew that she couldn’t kill Elliot,at least not right away,
no matter how much money she was given. She told herself
that she was attached to him the way a scientist is attached
to his lab rats: they are interesting in a completely objective way, nothing more. Besides, she liked the challenge
of shaping an individual. Elliot was the perfect candidate
because he was remarkably un-self-aware.

But she couldn’t see how Elliot could have wronged
anyone badly enough to be sentenced to death. It’s not
like he killed anyone. He’d stolen some ice cream. He’d

teased a superhero and he’d snuck out of school.These are
all very pedestrian things in Villain terms. No, there was
something else going on. And Innya decided she would
not kill Elliot until she figured out what it was.

But what would happen to her if she refused to
comply with this anonymous contract? Perhaps she could
stall for just a little while? Or maybe she just wouldn’t try
so hard to keep him protected, that way if something did
happen it wouldn’t really be her fault?

These thoughts swirled in her brain like a pinwheel
in a hurricane as she left her dorm and headed over to
Elliot’s room. They had planned to meet up and walk to
their group together. Innya had suggested it to keep him
safe. She told herself that she would have to stop doing
that so much even as she knew she wouldn’t.

But when she got to his room Elliot wasn’t there.
A note was taped to the door with her name on it. She
pulled the note free and scanned it quickly. It was in
Elliot’s handwriting and said that Dopple had asked him
to meet early in the Use What You Have Available room.
Innya’s heart skipped a beat, which was an interesting
phenomenon she had never experienced before when it
wasn’t due to the thrill of subjugating a weaker mind. But
she had no time to contemplate it because Vlad opened
the door just then, stared hard at her and scowled.

“I do not appreciate being woken up,” he said in
response.
“But aren’t the good cartoons on early?” she asked
in a snarky voice. But then she calmed herself and
demanded, “How long has Elliot been gone?”
Vlad shrugged.“Don’t know.You woke me up.Who
cares where your boyfriend is?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Innya turned and ran down the hall, down the
stairs, and out of the building, a difficult task considering she was wearing four-inch platform boots. As she ran
she was surprised to find that some of her breathlessness
was concern for Elliot’s safety. Despite what she had just
been paid to do she actually found herself hoping that she
wasn’t too late.

When he received the note Dopple had slipped
under the door the night before requesting that Elliot
meet him prior to their scheduled team meeting, Elliot
had thought it was to test out the gadget he’d be using to
tag the guards during the robbery. And so he went, thinking that maybe it would be a chance to bond with the
older student, and G.O.D. knew that he needed friends,
even crazy and annoying friends, even friends who had
the hots for his other friends. That’s how desperate he
was. And he had to face the facts: Innya was irresistible.
And she knew it, which made her even more irresistible.
If he was going to be around her without going crazy
he had to get used to people falling in lust with her on a
daily basis.

When Elliot walked into the Use What You Have
Available room Dopple wasn’t the only one there. Whatever conversation had been going on stopped and six pairs
of eyes locked on him. In the center of the motley group
stood Red and Dopple. Red sported a wicked smile.
Dopple looked like his normally bland self.

The air in the classroom had changed. What was
normally playfully sinister was now just plain sinister.
This was not good.

“Hey, New Meat,” Red called out. It wasn’t exactly
a challenge but Elliot understood that something was
about to go down. Red and his cronies had tormented
him since his first day at the VA and now they finally had
him alone. Innya had once suggested that it was because
they could smell the loser on him. Elliot had laughed but
sometimes he wondered if she was right.

If he passed by the Bruisers on campus they would
knock books or punch trays or whatever he was carrying out of his hands. If he wasn’t carrying anything they
would settle for just tripping him. Really, it wasn’t anything that the bullies at his old schools hadn’t done to
him before. Except, of course, whereas the Norm students
threw spitballs and French fries, the Villains preferred to
throw things at him that would kill him if they ever hit
their mark. But they never did. Elliot always got the feeling that they were actually trying to miss just so that they
could laugh at the look on his face. But now standing in
front of them, alone and unprotected except for his secret
armor, Elliot knew that they were not planning to miss
this time.

“Technically,” said Elliot, trying to find a voice that
did not tremble and managing to do it rather quickly,
“I’m no longer the new meat. There’s a kid who just got
here yesterday. I’ve been here for over two weeks now.
That makes me, technically, not the new meat.” Elliot met
the faces with semi-false bravado. He didn’t know what
had gotten into him but suspected that his impatience
with all of this posturing had made him foolhardy and he
wasn’t in the mood to take crap from some jerk.

Red’s smile just grew wider. “But that new kid turns
invisible. Right now she only does it when she’s nervous
but soon she’ll learn to control it and then she’ll be pretty
much unstoppable. She might even graduate early. But
you, you haven’t shown us anything. You haven’t shown
a single affinity in any class, unless of course you count
defrosting the ice princess.”

Elliot bristled at the reference to Innya. “Jealous
much?” he asked Dopple. “Is that why you set this up?”
“You need to show us something, anything,”
answered Dopple in Red’s voice.
“Don’t do that,” said Red, irritated.
“Sorry,” said Dopple in Red’s voice again. For a
moment Elliot thought that such a blatant indiscretion
might shift the focus from himself to Dopple but when
that didn’t immediately manifest he realized that he was
all out of chances.
The other kids started to close in around him and
Elliot didn’t know how to stop it. He was a fraud and if
they found out they would kill him. There was no way
they’d simply kick him out of the school and send him
home. And even if he were fortunate enough to get out of
this alive, where would he go? Home to his best friends
who had lied to him and a father who had wished him
out of existence? No, it was better to be here playing Villain with the real dickheads than to be out in the real
world having to deal with the two-faced kind.
“We’re going to have us a little baptism by fire.They
used to do this when the school first started. When a new
kid came, if he wouldn’t show his ability, or if it wouldn’t
manifest on its own within a few days, the other students
would surround him and start the initiation process.”
“And what is that?” asked Elliot. He realized that
he sounded like a smart ass but it wasn’t intentional.
“We attack you in every way and you try to fight us
off as best you can until an ability surfaces or…“
Elliot hated to ask but he had to, “Or what?”
The response was a collective smile on the faces of
the group. They meant to rough him up and he had no
way to fight them, nothing to show them. All of a sudden
Elliot’s bad attitude was gone and sheer terror rushed in
to fill in the void. He exhaled, took up what he thought
from his many hours spent watching action movies was a
defensive stance, and said, “Go ahead, make my day.”
“You’re as bad as your girlfriend, you moron,” said
Crusher,“Professor Titus distinctly said no movie quotes.”
“What are you gonna do?” Elliot asked, his voice
cracking, “Tell on me?”
“I’ve got a better idea,” she said.
Then the lights went out. Elliot felt a rush of air
by his face and then he was knocked to the ground as a
heavy body fell against him. There were screams and the
sounds of things breaking and crashing, of bodies hitting
other bodies and of bodies hitting the piles of junk. Elliot
lay there on the floor in the darkness and tried to make
himself as small as possible. More than a few people
tripped over him but he never moved because he didn’t
even know which way was up.
And then it was over. As quickly as it had started
the noise died down and Elliot felt that he might be the
only one not unconscious aside, of course, from the person who actually did the ass kicking. He had no idea who
it was and really hoped that whoever it was would leave
him alone.
The lights came back on suddenly and Elliot was
temporarily blinded. He blinked several times through the
pain and looked around. There was blood. He thought it
was strange that he could smell it. Whenever he heard
someone say that in the movies or read it in books he always
thought that it was just the writer being creative. But he
really could smell it. It smelled like pennies and B.O.
The bodies of his attackers were all around him
and they all appeared to be breathing and for that he
was grudgingly grateful. Elliot looked around so that he
could say thank you for saving his butt and beg to be left
alone but the only other person still standing was Innya.
She was wearing a pair of night vision goggles, which
she lifted up when she saw Elliot looking at her. Then
she smiled at him and even though she had just knocked
out and beaten six people bigger than her, she looked so
innocent when she smiled.
“
Oh
my G.O.D., the quarterback
is
toast!” she said
with loads of glee. “That’s another
Die Hard
quote, by the
way. That movie is just so… perfect!”
“I know where it’s from. Did you do this?” Elliot
asked.He had been afraid of her before and he had thought
that she was incredibly hot before but never before had the
two emotions been so irrevocably intertwined.
“Who else?”
“But why?” he asked.
She hesitated then quickly said, “Because someone
asked me to. I’ve told you that before.”
“You’ve got blood on your shirt.”
Innya looked down and saw that she did, indeed,
have blood on her shirt. It was only a small spot but it
pissed her off anyway. She kicked the nearest body, which
happened to belong to Dopple.“You ruined my new shirt.”
Elliot winced at the violence and she said flatly,
“You’re going to have to suck it up if you want them to
believe that you did this.”
“What? Why me?”
“So that they’ll leave you alone.”
Elliot realized the genius in her plan and said,“Oh,so
they’ll respect me and maybe not want to kill me anymore?”
“No. They won’t respect you. They’ll hate you for
besting them and they’ll want to kill you even more. But
at least this will make them pause before actually trying
anything again. That’s one thing about Villains: we often
get so involved in the plotting that nothing much happens at all for a very long time.”
“I see,” said Elliot, even though he didn’t. His head
hurt. “So who asked you to protect me?” he asked, knowing that she wouldn’t tell him.
As expected, she ignored the question. “Come on,”
she said,“Let’s get out of here before one of them wakes up.”
“Where’d you get the goggles?” Elliot asked as he
followed Innya outside.
“I saw them on Batboy as I ran. Have you met Batboy? Total whack-job but interesting guy. Anyway, he
gave them to me.”
“He just took them off his head and gave them to
you?” he asked. It sounded suspicious.
“I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
“Which was?”
“I flashed him,” she said nonchalantly. “We’ve been
over this. How else do you think I get what I want?”
Elliot sighed but said nothing, knowing it wouldn’t
get him anywhere even if he did. He didn’t have to like
her battle tactics but considering she had just saved his
life now was not the time to bring it up.
By the time they left the warehouse it had started
to snow. Even though he had almost just died the first
snow of the year always felt special and romantic and he
badly wanted to connect, to share it with someone. Without thinking Elliot tried to take Innya’s hand as a show of
affection and thanks for what had just happened but she
pulled away and glared at him.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her eyes
wide and seemingly horrified at the physical connection
that had almost just taken place.
“Just stretching.”He reached his arms up and out in
a mock stretch even though it didn’t make any sense and
they both knew it. He changed the subject. “What are we
going to do about Dopple trying to kill me?”
“Nothing. He’ll show up for our regularly scheduled
meeting, though probably late, cowed and complacent.”
“You mean we’re still going to work with him?”
Elliot asked incredulously.
“Of course. Another thing you must understand
about living with Villains: it is in our nature to try to
control and to destroy what we cannot control. You can’t
take it personally.”
“But aren’t they going to take this personally and
try to kill me some more?”To show he had been listening
he quickly added, “After spending a lot of time planning
my murder, of course.”
“They’re Villains.” She looked at him and her face
softened. “Look, I can’t explain it to you in terms you’d
understand because you are not a complete narcissist. But
you don’t have to understand it, just be aware of it and it
will help you survive.”
“O.K.” Elliot said, accepting of all of this craziness
as if it were just another day at school. “Hey, do you think
they would have killed me if you hadn’t shown up?”
“Definitely.”
“Huh.” Elliot had never been so close to death and
he found that now that it was over he was very calm. It
was odd, but he felt kind of detached from what had
just happened. Maybe the fact that she had turned off
the lights and fought in total darkness was helping that
detached feeling. He hadn’t really seen anything but the
aftermath. But it was still odd.
“Huh, what? Speak in sentences, please.” She had
said please but there was nothing polite in her tone.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised but I am.”
“A surprising number of things surprise you.”
“I’m a surprising kind of guy.”
“I’m surprisingly hungry.”
“It’s not really surprising, given that you just kicked
some serious ass. So let’s eat.”
“Hey, Elliot,” said Innya.
“Yeah?” He looked over at her and she was studying
his face. There was a strange look in her eyes that he had
never seen before. She seemed bothered by something
but he wasn’t about to ask what it was and get punched
in the face. Only a couple of weeks into their acquaintance and he already knew that Innya would probably be
offended if he asked what she was thinking. And after
what he had just seen, or had not seen, he really didn’t
want to offend her.
“I saved your ass. You so owe me.”
“I owe you.”
“Big time. And trust me, I won’t let you forget it.”