Outlaw: Relentless, A Marvel Heroines Novel, page 4
Mission accomplished, right? All’s well that ends well.
In the debriefing room, I resisted the impulse to squeeze the water out of my ponytail. Damn thing was still damp.
Once we’d gotten back to Stark Industries’ local offices, I’d retrieved the backpack I’d left with them. My clothes, my real clothes, and my hat were in there. We hadn’t been given the time or privacy to change before being dragged into the debriefing room, but just having them near made me feel better. I wasn’t far away from being myself again.
I didn’t say anything through the rest of the interrogation. Didn’t figure I had to. I’d already said everything I needed, and that only made things worse.
The temperature in the rest of the meeting cooled after that. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing we said could change the bare facts. We’d accomplished the mission’s objectives, and we’d done it in a way that made everybody unhappy.
The people on each side of this table just placed different weights on one over the other – or so I told myself. I was still in good with the posse, the people who counted to me.
I really wanted to believe I was still in good with them.
One last interesting thing happened. As I stood to go, I caught sight of Atlas Bear’s glower. It was even darker than usual, and it was fixed on Tony Stark.
She paused long enough to grab Mr Stark’s attention. He furrowed his brow. “What?”
“So many of the ways I’ve seen the world die start with you,” she told him.
This was the first time I’d seen Atlas Bear and Mr Stark in a room together, but Mr Stark would’ve been briefed on all of our abilities. He knew who Atlas Bear was, and what she could see.
It wasn’t long ago that she would have tried to kill him because of what her precognition had just showed her. He would have known that, too.
If he had any questions about what she’d said, she didn’t give him time to ask. He watched her, brow still creased but lips hanging open, until we reached the door.
The tension seeped out of my shoulders. Most of it, anyway. I didn’t know that I could ever relax in a place like this. Beige walls, cubicles, and stark white fluorescent lighting. The kind of place that was about as cheery to me as a prison. At least prisons were upfront about the fact that they wanted to crush your soul. I’ve spent more of my life in the county lockup than in any office, and, honestly, I don’t know that I’d swap. At least what got me in that lockup was having fun. The only thing that lands you in an office is the awful desperation of job-hunting.
The Stark Industries folks didn’t have anyone see us out of the building, but they wouldn’t need to. They’d have cameras everywhere, and they’d be watching. All their more sensitive places were locked up, anyway. Neena’s posse may have been their partners, but that didn’t mean they trusted us. Even bunched together in the elevator, we stayed quiet, each of us stewing in our own frustrations.
Outside, the sunlight bit my eyes. The last time I’d been outside, it had been a dead night – as dead as nights ever got under the nauseous sodium-orange haze of Boston’s light pollution. But that had been before the debriefing. Time had slipped away from me. Now – hell, I didn’t even know if it was morning. The skyscrapers blocked the sun.
We’d gotten more than a block away before we collectively decided it was safe to talk. It was like a breath came out of us all at once. The others all started speaking.
“How could you have let–” White Fox demanded.
“I don’t like that man,” Neena said. “Every time we’ve met, he’s–”
“What an amateur mistake–” Black Widow said.
“– Engine controls slip like that–?” White Fox continued.
“– Hateful mess that was,” Rachel was saying. “Let’s not do any of that again–”
Too much going on all at once. It took me too long to realize that at least half their anger, especially the half coming from the newer members of the team, was directed at me. Atlas Bear was silent, but, when I turned, that dark stare was aimed right at me.
Maybe I wasn’t in so good.
If we were going to do this, I wanted to do it properly. I reached into my backpack, felt the folded-up brim of my Stetson. It sprang out like a puppy chasing a squirrel through an open gate. I planted it over my hair. There. Now I was the only one of us not squinting into the sun… and I felt more like myself.
“Run us through this again,” White Fox told me. “How’d anyone get that close to the engine controls? Why didn’t you see them?”
“You heard me well enough in the debriefing.” She just wanted to drive it home.
“Either you didn’t hear them come in through those big, heavy hatches,” White Fox said, “or you didn’t check the bridge before you secured it.”
It would’ve been easy to think that White Fox was just trying to get under my skin. And maybe that was part of it. But, like the rest of us, she cared a lot about this job. Super heroes and supermercs tend to be on the perfectionist side. Deep down in her bones, she wanted to get it right. It wasn’t just the team’s reputation on the line. It was hers, too. Belong to the wrong team, and people in this business will remember that for ages. Hell, a lot of people still needle Rachel for having belonged to the Serpent Society, no matter how many years and about-turns ago that was.
Usually, I relished a good argument. But what she was saying wasn’t wrong. I had no comebacks.
In her position, I’d have been pretty upset, too. The defense we’d offered during the debriefing – that we’d still gotten what we wanted in the end – was immaterial next to the fact that I’d screwed up to begin with.
I was glad I had my hat to hide my eyes.
“It’s going to be a long time before we get any work with the Avengers or Stark Industries again,” White Fox said.
That was fine by me. I would never forgive Tony Stark for pushing the Superhuman Registration Act. I would work with him to hurt a bigger bad like A.I.M., and because Neena said so, but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over anything else. Not that it would have been wise to mention this now.
“The Avengers hate working with mercs, anyway,” Black Widow said. “Tony Stark is a little more flexible, but the other Avengers… they still wouldn’t have…”
“Still what?” Neena demanded.
White Fox sighed. “You know what she’s trying to say.”
“You don’t think we would have gotten the offer at all if you weren’t on the team,” Neena said.
Black Widow just looked at her. She knew what would happen if she said yes. But she still wanted to say it.
We were treading into some truly dangerous waters. To Neena, the idea that she was coasting on someone else’s reputation, that this wasn’t her team, was a deep cut. She’d break up this team before she’d let either of those things be true. She’d almost done it before.
Black Widow shifted the subject, but only a little. “You want to move up in the world. You want to get better jobs, to work with the big boys. That’s fine. But think about whether what you brought to the table before will be good enough now.”
“We’ve always been the best in the business,” I said. “Even when you were with the Avengers, you knew that.” There were only a few mercs that could rival us, and most of those weren’t team players. Like Deadpool.
“You know,” Black Widow said, “most of the teams I’ve worked on have had some member shakeups over the years. Keeps them fresh and vital. On top of their game.”
“Natasha,” Neena warned. First time I’d heard her call Black Widow by her name.
It wasn’t that I thought nothing could get past my armor. I know I’ve got chinks in my scales. I just thought I knew about all of them. Turns out I didn’t.
My nails bit into my palm. I couldn’t talk about it. I couldn’t tell them how tired I was. I couldn’t tell them how often I’d been dreaming of home, in Texas. A house I’d promised myself I’d never have to go back to. And I certainly couldn’t tell them about how I kept waking up in places I couldn’t remember falling asleep in. They’d think I was falling apart.
Neena and I were best friends, but we were in a deadly business. If she thought I couldn’t hack the job, or that I would put the rest of the team at risk, I couldn’t stay on it. Sentimentality can only get you so far in a firefight.
“I just messed up, is all,” I said. I’d made plenty of mistakes in my life. With few exceptions, none of them had been such productions.
Black Widow didn’t say anything else. But she didn’t need to. She’d planted the idea, and now White Fox picked it up. “Whatever it was, it cost us a lot,” White Fox said. “And it could have cost us a lot more.”
“Just lay off, you two,” Neena said, but there wasn’t much force in it.
“I mean it. We want to move up in the world, right?”
Neena didn’t answer. Any answer would have been a trap.
White Fox said, “We’re going to have to think long and hard about the kind of attitudes we’re going to leave behind. ‘Just messing up’ won’t cut it as an excuse when we’re working with teams like the Avengers.”
“You want to kick me out of the team, you can just say so,” I told her.
“Never going to happen,” Neena cut in.
I was used to sticking up for myself. All my instincts were going into fight-or-flight drive. And I didn’t really have a “flight” mode.
“You want to talk about this in private?” I growled.
White Fox tightened her jaw and ground her teeth. “Natasha and I aren’t ‘after’ you, Outlaw. But it would be a good idea to think about what we want as a team, and if we’re going to be able to get it, acting like we are.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m after,” I said. “Things used to be an awful lot more fun. When it was just Neena, Rachel, and me. Before we started opening the posse up to spies and hangers-on.”
I’d stepped over the line. I hate to say it, but I meant to. I didn’t know how to get back.
I also didn’t know if I’d counted on Neena to keep breaking in, cool things down. She didn’t. Rachel was silent, too. The sound of footsteps beside me didn’t stop, but it diminished. A couple people must’ve stopped walking. But not Black Widow.
She was looking right at me. Even with the brim of my hat hiding my eyes, I could feel it. While I’d been arguing with White Fox, she’d been smoldering the whole time.
“That’s your whole gimmick, isn’t it?” Black Widow asked. “Always chasing the past. You know, I used to think that outfit of yours was just a costume.”
“That’s not fai–” Rachel started to say. I cut her off.
“I used to have a lot more fun on my own, too,” I said.
I was halfway across the next block before I realized I was walking away. I walked facing down, my hat blocking the view in front of me. I didn’t care. I strode briskly, fists clenched, and, if there was anyone in my way, they swiftly got out of it.
What stuck with me the most was that Neena didn’t say anything. She’d stuck up for me at the start of the argument, but that had been it. After I’d chimed in, doing what I’d thought was defending myself, she’d fallen silent.
Good old Inez. Show her a tough situation she can’t punch her way through and trust her to always make things worse.
There was nowhere else for me to go after that. But I sure couldn’t follow them.
•••
City hotels are so damned expensive. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the money. Last few jobs before this one had paid well, and even Mr Stark had coughed out our paychecks (sans bonuses) for this operation. But it was the principle of the thing.
It took a long walk to find a hotel that fit my standards. I’d hoped the exercise would give me a chance to cool down, but it didn’t. The Princeps Hotel was a mean little building, dark gray and humorless, nestled up against the side of a much better-looking one. When I got to my room and turned on the AC, the air started to move, but I sure didn’t feel any cooler.
That could have just been me, though.
I was the worst kind of angry. It wasn’t rage, or hate, or anything that could’ve been turned to some kind of use. No, I was what my dad, God rest his soul, called sullen.
And I was still tired. So tired. It was all catching up to me.
And it wasn’t going to leave me alone.
I don’t remember falling asleep. That was the terrifying thing. One moment, a fog seeped over my head. And the next…
I had a dream about the best horse I ever knew. One of the only things I still missed from home, Wheezer. She was a palomino with a mane the color of sun-bleached sand. The name, happily, wasn’t accurate these days. She’d been born prematurely, had breathing problems. Dad didn’t think she’d survive long, and he wouldn’t have had the time to spend all day nursing her regardless.
But I wouldn’t let her go. I had to feed her like an orphan foal, keep the bottle held low, to make sure she wouldn’t aspirate it. I set my alarm to wake me up every two hours overnight – a big step for a kid who slept until noon every weekend. She lived in the cleanest stable that ranch ever saw. I wasn’t going to let any pneumonia get her.
She pulled through. Tough little foal. I didn’t feel comfortable naming her anything at all until she was over it. Calling her Wheezer was like a little private joke between us, a reminder of how we’d triumphed. Taking care of her was an accomplishment; the first thing I ever did I could be really proud of. She and I had both come out of the womb a little bit off.
She was past her prime as a riding horse now, but she was still living comfortably at Dad’s old ranch. My brother Elias took good care of her. I trusted him that far, at least. Elias had a soft spot for animals. It was the one thing we’d had in common.
My dream didn’t last all that long. I was riding Wheezer. The sun had baked the two of us, and I was drenched in sweat. Somehow, I was more tired than Wheezer. Even with my mutant endurance, I ached. It was like the exhaustion of these past few weeks had crept into my memories.
And the second I thought that, I knew for sure I was dreaming.
A pair of angry car horns jolted me upright. Suddenly, I was soaked through. Cold water pattered off the brim of my hat. It drenched my pants and squeaked in my soles. For a moment, I wondered if I’d stumbled into the shower, turned it on, and fallen asleep.
That would’ve been bad enough. This was worse.
Headlights sparkled through the rain. They were so bright they stung to look at, and the horn so loud it smarted to hear. My world spun. I was out in the open. Boston’s skyline circled the horizon, a crown of jewels half-lost in the downpour. The cold cut straight to my bones. For a moment, I got it confused with the cold I’d hoped to get out of the hotel room’s AC. But that must’ve been hours ago. It had been daytime then, and this was deep night.
The cars honking at each other moved on, leaving me alone in the cold and the dark.
I was sitting on a metal park bench, soaking in the water. The street in front of me fogged over, went gray and blurry.
The skyline was familiar, even in the dark. I’d been in Boston enough times to know the general layout. I should’ve been able to piece together where I was. But my mental map of the city was just as scrambled as everything else in my head.
I breathed into my hands, smelling for alcohol. Nothing.
But I found something in my palm: a paper receipt. It was drenched in rain, and most of the numbers were unreadable.
The muscles in my legs were tired, strung out, as if I really had been riding Wheezer all night.
I waited for my memory to clear, help me remember how I’d gotten here. It never did. All I could do was sit, cold and shaking.
Four
One thing you might’ve heard about me is that I have a nickname. “Crazy Inez.” People call me that when they want to get under my skin. They do it because it works.
First time I got the nickname was when I was a kid. I had a temper problem in school. And outside of school. And… well, just about everywhere, really. Later, when I became a merc and some of my enemies started poking into my background, the nickname came back up and started going around. I hated it now just as much as I did then.
Of course, as soon as those types found out how I reacted to it, that just made word go around faster.
I hated to think, even for a moment, that I wasn’t in control of myself.
Shut up. I know it’s ironic. That’s not the point. Or maybe it is the point. I don’t know. Funny how, even when we know we’re doing something self-defeating, it’s still hard to bring ourselves to stop it.
However I’d gotten to that park, I didn’t have my hotel keycard with me. I had to beg the hotel’s night auditor to let me back in. She was real thrilled about that. Honestly, if I’d had the presence of mind, I would’ve acted drunk. At least that would’ve given me an excuse. But I was too shaken up to think straight. I was half-tempted to knock the hotel room door down and just walk inside. Probably would’ve ended up spending the night in jail.
One of the reasons I knew I hadn’t been in my right mind was that I’d left my change of clothes in my backpack. I’d gone out in my jumpsuit disguise. Only thing I had on that I wanted to have on was my hat. I carried that into the bathroom, hung it on a shower hook to dry. One scalding-hot shower later, I was more awake.
After I got back in my own clothes, I felt a bit more like myself. Snug jeans, low-cut shirt, and a tan leather vest. Nothing too flashy. My hat was uncomfortably damp, but not so much that I’d go without it.
I’d dropped the receipt tape on the room’s desk. Even dried out, most of it was still unreadable. The top of the ticker read “United States Post Office.”
I couldn’t remember having gone to the post office any time in the past week. I had no idea where this had come from.
The raw pleasure of being myself again only lasted so long. There was nobody else here to see it. And the tired was always there, creeping up on me.
