The Rules of Supervillainy (The Supervillainy Saga Book 1) (16 page)

“I’m sorry, Mister Karkofsky, but no,” Guinevere replied, shaking her head. Her voice was like a vocal brownie, making me feel warm and relaxed.

“Figures.” I asked Cloak, “
Are you recharged yet
?”

“
Yes
.”

“Good,” I muttered. “Sorry, Gwen, I need to make my escape.”

I tipped my head and made a break for it, running for a nearby wall. Once more, I slammed headfirst into a nearby wall and landed on the ground.

“Cloak, does God hate me?” I said.

“
It depends which god you mean
.
I’ve met several
.”

“The Jewish one.”

“
Yes.”

Guinevere put her hand on the receiver. “Queen Isis put an enchantment on New Avalon. As a result, no one but a member of the Society of Superheroes can use their magic here.”

“Great,” I muttered, getting up. “No wonder you guys are so calm around me.”

“I’m sorry but this means we have to add attempting to escape to the charges against you.” Guinevere shook her head. “Let us get you sentenced.”

“You mean, judged, right?” I asked, feeling weak.

“Sure. If you like.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with the quality of the trial itself. An hour after it began, I was acquitted for every murder except the Typewriter and one of the Ice Cream Man’s henchmen. It was the breaking of the guy’s leg at the bank that got me worst; they considered that
malicious and unwarranted
. I argued it was warranted because the guy was a smartass.

That didn’t win me any points with the judges.

Those crimes, combined with the two robberies I’d committed meant I what was sentenced to a ‘relatively light’ hundred and forty-three years of imprisonment. I was up for parole in thirty-three years. I was being escorted through the Minor Supervillains Wing, which contained a number of people I recognized. There was Amplitude, Mister and Mrs. Chillingsworth, Dreadmaster, Psychoslinger, and even the Black Witch. I said hello to the last one.

She brushed me off.

“How long is everyone here for?” I asked.

“Life. Each supervillain here has accumulated enough to sentence them to spending the rest of their existence behind bars. The Society of Superheroes decided to step in when it was clear regular prisons weren’t equipped to handle supervillains. It’s our hope to correct the whole revolving door of incarceration. Unfortunately, it was too late to serve as a deterrent.”

“Moon justice is harsh.”

I had to say, the prison level was different than I expected. Unlike the dark and dreary prisons of Falconcrest City, New Avalon’s prison was bright and well-lit. Most of the rooms were filled with furniture and amenities.

The Society of Superheroes didn’t seem to be
punishing
their prisoners; they just seemed to be locking them away from the rest of society. It was like Guantanamo Bay crossed with
Good Housekeeping
. That didn’t change my desire to leave. The thought of being separated from Mandy for the rest of my life was terrifying. I’d been in the Society of Superheroes’ custody for just a few hours but I was ready to do anything to get out.

“Really, I think the trial went well.” Guinevere’s good cheer was starting to irritate me.

“I think it could have gone better. You could have
shot
me.”

“Oh, you’re just upset you were found guilty.”

“You
think
?”

Guinevere gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “You’ve been a good sport, Merciless. Maybe we can find some way to shave off time from your sentence. You could start by making ice cream for kids or lighting campfires for the Boy Scouts.”

“Or killing supervillains. I was good at that.”

“Unlikely,” Guinevere said, treating my suggestion as a serious one. “We prefer our inmates not get involved in violent professions. The Society of Superheroes doesn’t believe in the death penalty. Permanent incarceration is much more humane.”

“I don’t suppose I could persuade you I’ve turned over a new leaf?” I gave a fake smile. “I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting crime instead of committing it. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

“
Your mother is alive
.”

“
That’s the point
!” I said back to him.

Guinevere stared into my eyes, her dazzling beauty once more mesmerizing me. “Would your reformation be the truth?”

I started to drool again, speaking in a dull voice, “No, I’m telling you this because I want to get out. My mother is also alive. She is deeply ashamed of the fact I didn’t amount to anything.”

Guinevere lightly slapped me across the face again.

“Dammit!” I said, snapping out of it. “Stop doing that!”

Guinevere shrugged. “You’re not the first villain to try that, Merciless. In any case, I think you’ll like your living conditions. We’ve run out of space in the Minor Supervillains Ward so we’re putting you in the Archvillains Wing. The quarters are much larger there.”

“The Archvillains Wing?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right.

“General Venom, Mister Chaos, Professor Skeleton, the Red King, Soviet Ape, Tom Terror,” Guinevere said. “The big world-destroying evils.”

While flattering, this unnerved me.”  I was being lumped with them. “Could you do me a favor and make sure my wife visits me in a place other than the ones surrounded by the world’s worst psychopaths?”

A few of them weren’t
too
bad but most were less ‘rob banks’ and more ‘conquer the world.’ Never mind the hypocrisy of my earlier vow to do so.

“Visits? What an interesting idea. We’ll have to implement it.”

“
We have to get out of here.
”

“
No kidding! I always thought visiting the moon would be cool. This, this is horrible
.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“
They’re so... friendly while they’re tramping over my rights
,” I thought at Cloak, “
I bet they drink nothing but milk while they debate how to reform people via brain surgery. Doc Savage used to do that in the old pulp magazines. It freaked me out when I read about it
.”

“
Master, if you don’t use your powers for a week or more the dead will start to rise en masse. We’ve already got enough of a problem with those missing six cloaks. Master Warren went to elaborate lengths to get them from the Brotherhood of Infamy. Who knows who has them now
?”

“Oh right.” I remembered Cloak’s warning. “Speaking of zombies—”

“We weren’t.”

The two of us arrived at a massive vault door marked, “A-Wing.”

The door was made of reinforced steel and looked like it was capable of resisting a nuclear blast while a pair of guards in futuristic armor stood watch. They had laser guns in place of regular firearms, possibly because we were in space.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Gwen, if I don’t use my powers on a regular basis the dead will rise to devour the living. There’s also a bunch of cloaks the Nightwalker owned which need to be found, too. If not, it’ll be like me not using my powers times seven. So, it would be a
very
good idea to release me. That way, I can go take care of it. It’s for the greater good.”

“
Smooth
.”

“Thank you.”

“
I was being sarcastic
.”

Guinevere looked at me with pity in her eyes. “That’s a nice story, Merciless, but you already tried persuading me to release you.”

“No, wait, I—” I started to argue before the big vault door opened and the guards grabbed me by the arms, dragging me away. Seconds later, I was behind a translucent steel cell door.

“This could be a problem.” I looked at my cell. It was a fair reproduction of my living room (which was just creepy). “I’m not sure which disturbs me more, the lengths they went to make me comfortable or the surveillance they had to put me under in order to do it.”

“
They never would have done this before my death. I always believed superheroes should avoid getting involved in the legal process. It effectively restores feudalism.”

“Yeah. An inquisition run by the Brady Bunch with eyebeams. I need to get back to Falconcrest City. This isn’t my genre. It’s why too science-fiction meets four-color comic book. I’m more of a gritty urban supernatural detective guy.”

“
Bizarre as it may sound, I concur
.”

“Once I get back, I will never ever kill a superhero again. I’ll restrict myself to bloodless crimes, unless I’m fighting communists, Nazis, rapists, or people who rub me the wrong way.”

“
Have you learned nothing from this experience
?”

“I learned not to get caught.”

“Ahem,” I heard a voice coming from across the hall. “Hello, neighbor.”

Looking up, I saw a middle-aged man in the cell next door. He was bald, had a goatee, and was wearing tinted goggles from the 1940s. Completing the look was his outfit, which looked like a militarized version of a white laboratory coat. He couldn’t have been more villainous-looking if he tried.

Then I recognized him. My breath caught in my throat as I realized I was standing five feet away from Tom Terror, World’s Greatest Criminal Mind.

“Wow,” I said, staring. “Sir... “

I felt a mixture of admiration and fear. On one hand, you had to give kudos to the man who fought Ultragod on a regular basis with no powers—for eighty years. He looked good for his age, too. On the other, he was also the guy who blew up the Afghanistan-Pakistan border for shits and giggles.

“If I may debase myself to common correctional facility vernacular, may I inquire as to why you have found yourself in the deplorable state of incarceration in which you’ve found yourself?” Tom Terror asked.

“
He said...
”

“I understood what he said, Cloak.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m here for killing the Extreme.”

It was half-true, anyway. I never would have been arrested if not for them.

“Ah.” Tom Terror smiled a mouth full of shark-like teeth. “A more troublesome gang of ruffians and thugs has never existed in the so-called superhero world. Your Darwinian elimination of them from the gene pool has gone a long way to correcting the imbalance of power and violence which exists between our captors and myself.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, good job.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

Tom adjusted his purple tie, dropping his disturbing smile. “Tell me, fellow victim of the exploitative superhero penal system, do you have any abilities above and beyond those of normal men?”

“Yes. However, they’re being blocked by magic.”

“Ah, so your powers rely on strange dimensional energy invoked by either incantations or application of will,” Tom said, smiling. He certainly liked to hear himself talk.

“Yeah, my cloak is magic.”

“Your lack of supernatural abilities can be rectified.” Tom tapped the translucent steel of his cell door with his cane. “If, I were to, say, offer you a chance to do such a thing, would you be willing to assist me in a large-scale relocation of the prison’s population?”

“Tom—” I started to say.

“Thomas or Professor, please,” the mad scientist interrupted. “Though please do
not
call me Professor. I know it’s accurate but I had to execute a dozen newspaper reporters before they stopped printing my name that way. I still haven’t gotten them to stop shortening my name to Tom. Do they call him Tom Jefferson? Do they call him Tom Payne? I think not.”

Wow, I was dealing with a real nutcase for formality.

“You know, you can say breakout if you want. It’s not going to lower your IQ if you do. Also, there’s nothing wrong with Tom or Professor Terror.” I looked at him incredulously, putting my hands behind my back. “Mark Twain saw nothing wrong with the former and Professor Terror has a nice old school villainy feel.”

“Don’t lecture me on old school villainy, boy. I
invented
most of the tropes that come with it.” Tom clasped his hands together, grinning. “As for the rest, well, the debasing of the English language is something I’ve made it a point to correct. When I take over the world, every child will be forced to speak properly. Television, of course, will be outlawed. Except for the educational channels, of course.”

“I’ll be sure to get all my favorite shows downloaded by then.”

“I am asking if you want to assist in my breakout. I know most of the archvillains here, but I’m not familiar with you,” Tom Terror said.

“Have you performed any other feats of criminal activity of which I might have heard?”

“I’m the architect of countless evils across the centuries, of which you know nothing because I’m
that
good at covering my tracks.” I crossed my fingers behind my back.

“Uh-huh.” Tom’s voice dripped with disdain.

“Yes,” I said. “You know the Black Death? That was me. Genghis Khan? Me again.”

“I see” Tom said. “This is your first time in prison, isn’t it?”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Yes. I believe you about the Extreme, however. My offer stands. I need someone who can be trusted to serve as my right hand.”

I looked around, spotting Soviet Ape throwing darts at the Prismatic Commando’s picture while Mister Chaos had decorated his room with headless dolls. “Wow, did you come to the wrong place.”

“Tell me about it. Now are you in or not?”

“I’m listening.”

“Do you know anything about parallel worlds?”

“Just what I learned from
Doctor Who
and
Star Trek
,” I replied, not sure what he was suggesting. “Infinite realities, blah-blah, quantum physics, yakity-smackity.”

“That’s close enough for our purposes,” Tom said. Something about his voice made me feel sick to my stomach, as if I was listening to audible evil. “I’ve discovered a parallel reality where superheroes never existed. Most of the pop culture is still the same, though, for reasons I cannot yet fathom.”