Chapter Three
(Interlude: Maribel)
Maribel awoke with her face snuggled in a pillow. It took a few moments to remember where she was. On the floor, Taylor's sleeping bag was empty, and she couldn't sense her anywhere in the house or nearby.
Taylor hadn't ditched her. She wouldn't. The idea was silly.
Maribel pulled the white sock over her stump and from the nightstand took her prosthetic hook and slid it on. As she did every morning, she flexed the mechanism of the pincers. When she stood and stretched, her right knee and shoulder cracked with pain. She wrapped on the leg brace, tugging the Velcro tight. In the bathroom, she took her Paxil, and then used her hook to brush her teeth. She felt a little bit of pride that she didn't drop the toothbrush once.
She walked down the stairs and smelled the bacon and toast before she saw Mr. Hebert-or Danny, as he insisted she call him-sitting at the kitchen table.
"Hi there, Maribel. Pull up a seat. We saved you a plate. There's some leftover pizza in the fridge. Taylor's on her morning run. She'll be back in a few minutes."
Maribel knew she shouldn't feel left out, but it still kind of stung.
Before the hurricane, when Maribel had a mom, a brother and friends, she used to be pretty good at small-talk. It didn't come quite as naturally now, but she wanted to make the effort.
Danny was a gawky-looking scarecrow of a man that always seemed worried. Despite or maybe even because of that, Maribel liked him. He was a lot like his daughter and was a nice dad. Maribel's dad had been someone she'd seen a few times, and that was years ago. Some of her mother's boyfriends had been kind enough, but they had come and gone.
"Thanks for having me over, Danny," she said between bites of toast.
"Oh, you can come over as much as you like. I'm glad Taylor has a friend again. You probably know more about the bullies than I do, but they've been giving her some real trouble. Back in January, they . . . Well, I won't go into it . . ."
"I know about the locker," she said.
Danny looked down and nodded. "The school promised they'd watch out for her after that, but if the bullies are bothering you, they're not doing enough." He sighed. "Maybe I should call Alan-that's Emma's dad, he's a lawyer-and see if he can't put pressure on them. Maybe Emma can keep an eye out for you two. She and Taylor were as close as sisters a couple of years ago, but I think they drifted apart. It happens. I think you'd like her, though."
Well, Danny may have been a nice dad, but he was also an oblivious idiot. She considered telling him the truth but didn't want to lose Taylor's trust. And besides, she had a feeling Danny's ignorance was largely willing.
Fortunately, Taylor returned before things got more awkward.
They both got ready to leave. Maribel wore the same clothes as yesterday, which she tended to do anyway. At least they were clean.
The walk to the market was longer than her knee was comfortable with, though she didn't want to look weak in front of Taylor. It was bad enough Taylor was obviously taking things slow so Maribel wouldn't lag behind. This gave them more time to talk, however, and that soon turned to cape names,
"How about 'Hive Queen'?" Maribel asked. "Because, you know, you're a queen bee or whatever."
"Well, it's not necessarily villainous," Taylor conceded, "but it sounds kind of ostentatious, doesn't it?"
"You're a superhero."
"But I'm just starting out. That name sounds like it belongs to someone who's already established themselves."
"How about just, 'Hive' then? Later, you can give yourself a promotion."
"Maybe. I'll think on it. How about you?"
Maribel had thought on this too, but trump names were kind of tricky. "'Karma'?" she ventured. "Because I buff the good guys and nerf the bad?"
Taylor frowned and looked her over. "It's not what I'd pick for you, but . . . I don't know what I'd pick for you. I'm sorry. I'm terrible at coming up with names."
Maribel shrugged. "We both are. I guess we can just let the public name us, but we might get stuck with something stupid."
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Taylor said.
Maribel had grown inured to the ache in her knee by the time they reached the market, a massive bazaar that sold every kind of ware imaginable. In Boston, she'd go to places like this every weekend, but in the few months she'd been in Brockton Bay, she'd come here only handful of times with her grandma. With its labyrinthine crowds and constant background chatter, she found she was no longer her old self and felt anxious and vulnerable.
Because of that, she kept on her army coat, even though it was warm. As a compromise, however, she left it unbuttoned, displaying her Erykah Badu t-shirt-the one her mom had bought her. Her hand and hook she hid in her pockets.
What she always did when encountering new crowds was use her powers to scan for parahumans. Panacea lived in Brockton Bay, and Maribel could always hope to come across her. She knew what she'd do if she did: limp around and look sad. She hated pity-stares, but if she was going to get one, it may as well be from someone who could do something about it.
But the only capes she detected were some sort of deductive thinker, a master body-controller, and a shaker who could generate fields of sensory-dampening blackness. That last one could have been Grue of the Undersiders, though if it was, his Wiki page didn't do his powers justice. She searched for sight of them among the masses of Saturday morning shoppers, but they were already out of range.
Taylor bought some straps for her costume, and Maribel spent most of what little she had on a can of pepper spray. She'd told Taylor she had more money than she really did, but the lie was a benign one. No cash? No credit card? It didn't matter: Maribel would get what she needed.
They passed a stall selling woodwind instruments, and Maribel stopped when she saw a saxophone. It was an Alto Yamaha, student model. She wasn't really admiring-it was too painful for that-just staring and remembering.
"I used to play," Maribel said. "Afterwards . . . my old school said they could get me a custom sax, one that could be played one-handed. But then I moved here. I doubt Winslow would be willing to foot the bill."
Taylor sighed. "Even if they did, it'd just be another thing for the trio to fuck with. Last year, they stole my flute-my mother's flute-right out of my locker. I don't even want to know what they did with it."
Maribel looked up at Taylor's thin face, the broad mouth tight with anger. When Taylor spoke of the bitches, she always paradoxically seemed resolute while at the same time defeated. It was heartbreaking.
"I'm sorry," Maribel said, gently squeezing Taylor's hand. She hoped the gesture wasn't too weird.
They went on. Maribel waited until they out of everyone's earshot before saying, "You should tell your dad. Tell him everything."
"Everything?" Taylor asked, raising an eyebrow. "Like that I'm a cape?"
"Yeah. And about the bitches. You act like they're always going to win and you're always going to lose. But it doesn't have to be that way."
Taylor barked a bitter laugh. "You say that, and you know Sophia is a Ward. She's protected. What the fuck can my dad do? And besides, I have no proof. I've written down everything they've done since September, but they could say I just made all that up. It'd be my word against their's. The only thing that would happen would be we'd lose everything to legal fees." She gave Maribel a shrewd look. "Have you told your grandmother you have powers?"
"Yes," she said, noting Taylor expected a no. "But I don't think she believes me. It's hard to show off trump powers if there's no cape around." That, and Maribel had just been released from a psychiatric ward when she told her. No need to bring that up, though.
Taylor stopped at a rickety bookseller's stall and rifled through an old cardboard box filled with worn paperbacks. It looked like science fiction and fantasy stuff. Maribel wasn't much of a reader, though, and so decided this was as good an opportunity as it was going to get to do her shopping.
"I have somethings I need to do," she said. "Just wait here. It won't take more than a few minutes, and . . . it's kind of a surprise."
That Taylor's eyes narrowed showed she found this a little suspicious, but then she probably told herself Maribel was just going to get her a gift. Which was true. Sort of.
They agreed to meet at Fugly Bob's in a half hour, which was more than enough time. As she lost herself in the crowd, she hoped Taylor wasn't using bugs to spy on her.
Along the edge of the market were a number of real brick-and-mortar businesses, mostly corporate chains. Maribel chose a convenience store and dug through a trashcan out of sight of the front doors. It smelled of rotten milk and spilled soda, but she soon found an intact receipt listing a number of pricey items. Its date was yesterday. Good.
There was that old saying: "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." Maribel's mom had taught her many things, and though she was gone and Maribel missed her, what she had learned from her still remained.
She had loved their shopping trips together. Mom would distract the employees with some loud but trivial complaint while Maribel would slink along the medicine aisle, methodically sweeping the shelves of their name brand allergy and antacid pills. That stuff sold like hot cakes at the flea market.
Maribel was no longer fast or nimble, but she knew what to do.
She peeked through the window and waited until the front cashier disappeared down a corner before entering through the automatic doors. The most expensive things on the receipt were shavers and high-end hairstyle products. It didn't take long to collect them. After making sure she wasn't seen, she used her hook to scrape off the security stickers and jimmy open the anti-theft locks. Her shoulder burned by the time she was done, making her acutely aware of the screws and pins that held the shattered joint together. She stuffed the loot in her army coat, made sure the coast was clear and sneaked out of the store.
A minute later, she re-entered and boldly limped up to the customer service desk.
Any manager with two brain cells to rub together would throw her out or even call the police, but this fat, middle-aged woman obviously didn't give a shit she was being scammed. Corporate policy stated that if you had the receipt and the items, you could return them, and that was that.
The lady looked sympathetically when she saw Maribel's hook. "I'm afraid I can only give you store credit, sweetie."
Maribel smiled, eyeing the goods beneath the glass counter. "That'll be fine."
She ended up buying a tiny plug-in camera, a burner phone, two radio headsets and two pairs of cheap binoculars. On her way out, she filched a packaged rain slicker and a wide-brimmed black hat. Not badass like Taylor's, but it was a costume.
She was a little ways out of the store when she detected the cape. The powers involved spacial distortion, which meant it was Vista. Maribel scanned the crowd in the direction her senses told her until she spotted the pretty blond girl. The Ward was younger than Maribel, maybe about twelve, and was strolling along with a canvas shopping bag while she ate a corn dog.
A few days before, Maribel would have been thrilled to see her, just as she'd been when she first saw Sophia at Winslow.
Even before Shadow Stalker had joined the Wards, Maribel had almost obsessively followed her career on the PHO forum. Shadow Stalker: the edgy lone-wolf antihero cleaning up Brockton Bay. Sophia certainly had looked the part, with her fierce panther-like face, long straight black hair and a slender athletic body Maribel wished she had. But then Maribel had heard things, and she had watched. The truth had been crushing.
For all Maribel knew, they were all like that. Did Vista torture kittens? Was Gallant a rapist? If the corruption ran that deep, the Wards were just a house of cards waiting for that one little gust of nightmare PR to blow them away.
Nothing that dramatic was likely to happen, but at the very least Maribel could take down Sophia. That's what friends were for.
She found Taylor sitting at a booth at Fugly Bobs, a rundown looking fast food joint overlooking the beach. While munching on cheeze-fries, Maribel showed Taylor what she'd 'bought.'
Taylor had only pecked at her burger, but then she didn't look like she ate very much. She fiddled with the flip phone Maribel had given her and looked vaguely disappointed.
"Is . . . is the surprise you were talking about? I mean, it's nice. Thank you. I guess I do need-"
Maribel laughed. "No, that's not it. You'll just have to wait. But don't worry. I know you'll like it."