"I know I'm not breaking any new ground here, but I feel like it's important to start this account by clarifying that there's a difference between a person being a villain and a person being a bad person. A villain, more than anything, is a job. As much as people like to pretend otherwise, villainy, like heroism, is a profession. You punch in, you clock out, you cash your sponsors' or employers' checks, you decide how much of a boundary you build between your personal life and your public persona. Am I a villain? I think anybody you asked would say yes. Am I a bad person? That gets more complicated, and goes back a lot farther than the first time I put on the mask of Maelstromeda."
Melinda May's next sentence was interrupted by the sharp ringing of the phone. So much for getting a good start on her project this afternoon.
Heaving a sigh, she clicked off the tape recorder and pulled herself out of her chair with a faint groan. Her knee was acting up again. One of the many hazards of continuing her line of work into middle age.
She crossed stiffly to the other side of the room, but was surprised to find that her work line was dark and silent. Odd. She listened again as the phone continued ringing and realized, probably more slowly than she should have, that it was her personal phone – well, one of them – that was making the all the racket. Odder still.
"Hello?" She knew better than to say anything more than that when answering an entirely unexpected call.
"Hi, this is Dr. Greene from the Metro General ER. Is this June Johnson speaking?"
Melinda didn't speak immediately. She was quickly rifling through as many possible reasons why someone from the city hospital would be calling for one of her scarcely-used aliases. Was this a trap? Had someone figured out one of her secret identities? How much of her life might be compromised?
"Ms. Johnson?"
"I'm sorry, yes, I'm here." The only way to figure out how much her enemies might know was to keep them talking.
"We're calling about your daughter."
"My… daughter?"
Melinda didn't have a daughter. At least, not as far as she knew.
"Yes, Daisy was brought in not long ago. She had an accident and sustained some injuries. We're treating her now, and she should be fine, but her intake paperwork has you listed as her emergency contact, and we wanted to let you know."
"My daughter," Melinda repeated numbly. "My daughter Daisy is in the hospital?" What was this doctor talking about?
"Again, I want to assure you that she's being taken care of and is not in any sort of critical condition—"
"Who gave you this number?" she demanded, her old familiar defensiveness taking over on instinct. "What do you want from me?"
"Your number is listed as the emergency contact. We want you to come pick up your daughter from the hospital and sign her discharge paperwork. She's a minor, she can't leave without adult consent." Now it was the doctor who sounded confused and defensive. "Look, Ms. Johnson, if there's someone else we should call—"
"No," Melinda said sharply. "No, I'll be right there."
She hung up before the doctor had a chance to say anything more, and before anyone trying to trace the call would have time to narrow the signal. She began to pace the length of her office, massaging her knee absent-mindedly as she tried to figure out what was going on.
Someone had access to one of her personal lines – one connected to one of her aliases. Granted, June Johnson was one of her more mundane identities, one she used for some real estate, a few investment accounts… Above-board stuff, typically. But still, for someone to use the number for a hospital call and not a financial check-in… And apparently an injured child was involved? Unless it was all a set-up, and the child was a falsehood designed to lure her into a public place.
She thought through the list of opponents she'd gone toe-to-toe with recently. The Specter Society were white-collar, not likely to engage in physical cat-and-mouse tactics. The Watchdogs had been quiet for some time, so it was possible this was their reappearance. And Quake… no, inventing a hurt child just to draw her out into the open was certainly not Quake's style.
Despite the obvious warning signs, Melinda's curiosity began to get the better of her, and if she was being honest, the possibility that there was actually a child in need of help was beginning to weigh on her, too. Maybe there was some sort of mix-up at the hospital and her information got confused for another June Johnson. It wasn't that uncommon of a name, after all.
Her mind made up, Melinda headed for the closet and began to dress, donning enough of a disguise that she should be able to enter the hospital undetected and get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all.
She was on high alert as she walked into the emergency room entrance at Metro General. Old habits had her checking every corner, window, and roofline as she slipped into bustling building and made her way to the front desk.
"How can I help you?" asked the receptionist cheerfully.
"Um, yes, I'm June Johnson. I got a call about twenty minutes ago about my daughter, Daisy?"
The receptionist nodded along as Melinda spoke and began typing something into her computer. "Mm-hm, yep, I've got her pulled up here. Do you have ID?"
With an ease only perfected by years of deception and undercover work, Melinda produced her fake driver's license, complete with all of June Johnson's credentials.
"Great. Let me just print off this visitor's badge for you and then you can head on back. She's in exam room 3 behind those big double doors to your right."
Melinda thanked the woman – she may be a villain, but she wasn't rude – and followed her directions, still raking her gaze across the room in search of anything suspicious, trying to feel if anyone in the room was harboring bad intentions. Nothing stood out besides waves of anxiety rippling off most of the people in the waiting room. She didn't feel especially comforted by that fact, and her confusion continued to grow.
When she opened the door to exam room three a few moments later, what she saw only added to her bewilderment. A girl in dark makeup and a knit cap sat hunched on the exam bed, her left arm encased in a thick cast from knuckles to forearm. A girl that, despite Melinda never having seen her face before, Melinda instantly knew. Maybe it was the way she carried herself, or the color of her hair that tumbled out from underneath the beanie – dark brown waves with a few purple streaks here and there. Possibly it was her eyes. Her usual mask and cowl hid her identity well, but even those garments couldn't obscure the dark, fierce eyes that Melinda had stared into so many times, across so many battles, and that were staring at her now. This girl was Quake, Melinda was sure.
But she couldn't be. This girl was a child, surely no more than 16 or 17, and Quake… well, Melinda didn't know exactly how old her so-called nemesis was, but the hero had sponsorships and SHIELD gear, and she knew you had to be at least 18 to obtain those. There were laws about that sort of thing these days.
Melinda opened her mouth to speak, although she had no clue what to say. The "what the hell?" that was ringing in her mind didn't seem appropriate at the moment. Before she had a chance to formulate something more articulate, however, the girl – Quake? – promptly burst into tears.
"I'm sorry," she blubbered. "I'm sorry, I didn't know who—"
"Can we have a moment, please?" Melinda asked abruptly, prompting the doctor and nurse present to nod and leave the room. It wasn't to save the girl from the embarrassment of crying in front of strangers – Melinda was a villain, after all, and not so soft as to worry about her nemesis' feelings like that – but more to give them both the freedom to get to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on here.
Melinda wanted to demand answers from the kid, but the girl was still crying, eyeliner starting to run, and babbling on about something that Melinda couldn't make out over the hiccup-y tears. Even if Melinda hadn't been able to sense the genuine fear, pain, and helplessness radiating off the girl, it was more than obvious just to the naked eye. This kid was bad off.
Wordlessly, Melinda reached over and placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. It gave the appearance of a comforting gesture, but it served the clandestine purpose of allowing Melinda to more accurately get a sense of the girl's emotions. Her powers were strong enough to pick up on emotions without physical contact, certainly, but things always became more finely attuned with touch and she needed to be 100 percent sure this wasn't a trap.
The girl looked up, startled by Melinda's hand. The fear and pain Melinda had felt pouring out of the kid from across the room were all there, sharper now, and with an added layer of shame that Melinda had missed before. Kid must have been trying to bury that one pretty deep.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," the girl murmured, scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeve on her non-casted arm and further smudging her ruined makeup. Her sleeve bunched up as she scrubbed, revealing that the skin on this arm was covered in a rainbow of bruising. Melinda bristled, and the girl pulled away from Melinda's touch. "Do you… know who I am?"
"Yes. And you know who I am, apparently."
"I'm sorry, I… They wouldn't let me leave without an adult…"
"And for some reason I was the only adult you could think of? Why not call your parents? Or your SHIELD handler?" Melinda asked, probably more brusquely than she should have. She couldn't help it. She'd had two years of trading barbs with the kid, and the habit was hard to drop.
The girl shifted uncomfortably and looked away. Another pulse of shame found its way to Melinda, this one close enough to the surface that Melinda could feel it even without putting her hands on the girl. Touchy subject.
"I'm sorry," the girl said again. "Look, if you just sign the papers, we can both leave and pretend like this never happened."
"What did happen, exactly?"
"It was stupid," she shook her head. "I tripped and fell down some stairs at my apartment. The bones in my arms… they're fragile, and without my gauntlets…"
"Your bones are fragile?"
"My powers. Not exactly bone-friendly, and I'm out of my CalciFi pills."
"Calcify?"
"For rapid bone restoration and healing. SHIELD tech."
"Ah. And you can't get more?"
The girl shook her head. "Not for a while. SHIELD's pretty stingy with their experimental meds."
Melinda didn't say anything to that. She knew all too well about SHIELD's medical policies, not that she'd admit that to Quake. Or anyone these days.
"I know this is weird," the girl mumbled. "I shouldn't have called you—"
"Well, you did, and I'm here now. So we might as well get you out of here."
Melinda felt gratitude rush out of the girl.
"Seriously? You'll help me?"
"I think the doctors would be suspicious if I just left you here. Me being your 'mother' and all."
They called the doctor back in then, and before long there were discharge papers in hand. Outside the hospital, Quake turned back to Melinda.
"Well, thanks. I guess I'll probably see you around at some point when we're… dressed up." She turned and started walking down the sidewalk.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Quake stopped, turned back around. "Um… home?"
"On foot?" Melinda arched an eyebrow. "It's cold, you don't have a coat. You have brittle bones and a freshly broken arm; you're not walking. And you don't look old enough to drive."
"I'm 17." Quake almost looked like she was pouting at the accusation about her age, which did not help her appear older. "And it's not that big a deal. I walked all the way here just fine; I think I can make it home."
"Oh, for the love of god, would you just come with me? I'll drive you home."
Melinda had expected more of a fight, but Quake followed behind her wordlessly until they got to the parking lot. She scanned around as they walked, like she was looking for something.
"What?"
"Where's the Storm Cycle?" she asked.
Melinda fought the urge to snort. "I came here as June Johnson. I drove a Honda Civic. It'd be a little conspicuous to show up on a souped-up battle bike, don't you think?"
"Oh, yeah." Quake looked embarrassed. "I guess I just never thought about you as a civilian. Is June Johnson your real name?"
"Is Daisy Johnson yours?"
"…no."
"Well, I think you've answered your own question, then."
Melinda unlocked the Civic and they both climbed in.
"Where am I taking you?"
"West side. 52nd and Carter," Quake told her. Melinda frowned, but didn't say anything. That part of town was notoriously rough. Unusual for a SHIELD-affiliated hero to live somewhere like that.
"So, uh, if your name isn't June, what should I call you?" the girl asked as they drove through the city. "It seems a little weird to call you Maelstromeda when you're wearing jeans and a leather jacket."
"Jesus, kid, are you wearing a wire or something? Trying to get me to spill my secret identity?"
"I'm not wearing a wire!" Quake protested. With her good hand, she plucked at her flannel shirt, flapping it back and forth to demonstrate the lack of microphones or hidden bugs tucked into the fabric. She huffed and flopped back in her seat. "I'm just trying to make conversation."
"I'm not really much for conversations," Melinda said dryly.
"Besides, you're the one who's about to know my home address. If you wanted to, you could come back tonight and blow up my whole apartment building."
"Do you really think I'd do that?"
"No," Quake admitted, after a beat. "No, you don't kill people."
Not anymore, Melinda thought. Not after Katya. "Is that why you picked me to call? Because I don't kill people?"
"No," the girl said again. "At least, not entirely. I don't know. We've spent a lot of time together."
"We've spent a lot of time fighting each other."
"You pull your punches when you fight me."
"I do not!" Melinda insisted, frowning. She did pull her punches, but she didn't realize anyone could tell. So sue her, she tried to be a little more careful when she fought Quake. She might not have known Quake was a kid, but she could still tell Quake was a young hero, new on the scene. There was no point in hurting the kid more than what was necessary for a given job. Rough her up enough to make a show, make sure SHIELD and the sponsors got their money's worth out of Quake's abilities, but never try to cause lasting damage. Melinda knew firsthand that there were enough other people in the world who could take care of that for the girl, especially if she was already wearing the SHIELD tag.
"You do so," shot back the girl. "You always stick to incapacitation. Plenty of other villains don't do that."
"Well, what about you? I've seen you level an entire building in a fight with Gravitron. You've never used your powers like that on me."
"I don't know," the girl sulked. She tried to cross her arms, but the cast made it difficult. "I guess 'cause I like fighting you more than I like fighting a lot of the other villains. I don't want to put you out of commission permanently."
"As if you could put me out of commission," scoffed Melinda.
"I literally have earthquake powers," Quake said, shaking her head in disbelief. "You're a good fighter, but you've got, what, a little run-of-the-mill super strength-agility combo and that cool sword? Clearly one of us could take down the other in a heartbeat if she really wanted to."
Melinda forgot sometimes that most people didn't know about her empath powers. Not that those would do much against an actual earthquake, true, but still nice to know that she still had a few tricks up her sleeve when it came to the stubborn teenager.
They rode in silence for a while, city blocks and skyscrapers rolling past them as Melinda navigated the car through traffic and over towards the west side. Quake's neighborhood wasn't exactly close to the hospital. It would have taken her over an hour to walk home.
It was true that Melinda wasn't much for conversation in most cases, but there was one question that was burning in the forefront of her mind. Well, really a whole host of questions about this entire, bizarre situation, but one question that mattered the most, because it was the one that affected her personally.
"I have to know," she began, and she saw out of the corner of her eye that Quake winced, apparently dreading an incoming question, "how did you find my number? And my name, for that matter? That information's not exactly public."
Quake's body language relaxed, confirmed by the feeling of relief that Melinda could sense lapping at her subconscious. Clearly whatever question she had been fearing, Melinda hadn't asked it.
"I've kind of got a thing with computers," Quake admitted, not without a hint of pride. "After I first got assigned to you, I did some research of my own. Tapped into some back channels, did a little digging on the dark web and things like that. Maybe… cracked into a few bank records here and there."
"Not very heroic of you," Melinda smirked.
"It's not like I was going to use the info to go after you or anything!" protested Quake. "It was just about, you know, 'know your enemy' and all that jazz. Like… digital recon."
"And so somehow you managed to find June Johnson and connect her to me?"
"June Johnson, April Wong, Heidi Martin, Deb Chen, Camille Wray…"
Melinda could feel herself growing more and more unnerved as Quake rattled off nearly every alias and pseudonym she had used since first going into the field. She did notice, at least, that the name Melinda May wasn't on her list, but the kid had been serious when she'd said she was good with computers. Some of those identities were buried so deep Melinda had nearly forgotten about them herself, and here this teenager, this child, was, ticking them off her fingers like it was no big deal.
"I couldn't find everything on you," Quake continued, oblivious to how unsettled Melinda had become. "SHIELD had some files on you that were so tied up and redacted that I couldn't get at them, and I couldn't find anything that gave me conclusive evidence about which one of those names is really you, but I know a lot." She paused and gave Melinda a quizzical look. "Didn't you ever do that for me? Try to figure out my secret identity? Isn't that, like, villainy 101?"
"Knowing your identity isn't relevant to the type of work I do," Melinda said simply. It was true, it didn't matter to her who was behind the mask when she was facing off with a hero for a primetime sponsor check or trying to pull off a job for an employer without hero interference. But it also was something that Melinda had decided for herself a long time ago – everyone was better off if she left personal lives and secret identities out of the equation.
A brief flicker of regret fluttered up in her chest. Maybe it hadn't mattered to her who was behind the mask when she went to battle against someone, but maybe if she'd cared about that fact a little bit more, if she'd actually looked into her opponents more closely, she might have realized sooner than today that she was fighting a literal child on an almost weekly basis.
She shuddered to think about how things could have gone horribly wrong if she'd hit Quake a little too hard or swung her sword a little too forcefully. A child. How could SHIELD allow a child out in the field? After everything…
"This is me up here," Quake said, pointing and dragging Melinda back out of her own spiraling thoughts.
Melinda pulled the car up in front of the most dilapidated-looking apartment complex she'd ever seen – and living in Metro City, she'd seen a lot of crummy apartments. At least half the windows were broken or boarded up. There was so much grey, sooty dirt caking the sides that Melinda couldn't remotely tell what the original color of the building had been, and the rainbow of graffiti didn't help matters, either. Scraggly weeds twisted out of cracked sidewalks that glimmered with broken glass, and uncollected heaps of trash bags overflowed from a dumpster on one side. To top it all off, the whole building lilted to one side, giving the impression that a strong gust of wind would probably send the whole thing toppling down any day now. It was, to be perfectly blunt, an absolute shithole.
"This is where you live?"
"Is there a problem?" Quake scowled at her, defiance radiating plainly from the passenger side of the car.
"That depends, are you up to date on your tetanus and rabies shots?" Melinda deadpanned.
"Look, it's the only place I can afford, and the landlord doesn't ask questions or run background checks, so why don't you just lay off?"
"What do you mean, it's the only place you can afford?" asked Melinda, holding up a hand. "Why are you the one paying rent? You're a teenager. Where are your—?"
"I live alone, okay? It's not a big deal, so don't make it one."
"You live alone. Here." Melinda repeated slowly, frowning up at the building that most definitely should have been condemned twenty years ago.
"It's not like I'm in any danger. I'm literally a superhero," Quake pointed out.
"You're also literally a child—"
"I'm 17—"
"A child," Melinda stressed. "How is this even legal? You're a minor."
"I told you, the landlord—"
"In fact," Melinda cut her off, raising a single finger to stop Quake's rebuttal in its tracks, "how is any of this legal? How are you a hero at 17? We've been fighting each other for nearly two years, which means you started heroing when you were… Jesus, 15? There's no way that's above-board. SHIELD isn't allowed to—"
"SHIELD doesn't know," Quake hissed. She narrowed her eyes, anger searing off her like hot, solar flares, and raised a finger of her own, jabbing it towards Melinda. "And they're not going to know. I told you, I'm good with computers. I faked my records. SHIELD thinks I'm 20, that I joined up right when I turned 18. I… I needed the job. I needed money, and I figured hey, I've already got powers, so I might as well put them to use. Earn some money and try to do some good at the same time. Help people, you know?"
"I don't understand," Melinda shook her head. "Why the hell did you need money and a shitty place to live when you were only 15 years old? What had you so desperate that you'd fake records and lie to a group as powerful as SHIELD just for a hero contract?"
Quake fell silent. A muscle jumped in her jaw and Melinda could feel that old, familiar shame she'd sensed back at the hospital start to leech into the air inside the car. If Melinda had been a nicer person, maybe she'd have let the girl off the hook, but as it was, Melinda had no problem sitting there and waiting for answers. She had sprung the kid from the hospital and given her a ride home, after all. Surely she was owed a little bit more of an explanation.
"My parents threw me out. For… for being Enhanced. They'd always been anti-Enhanced, so when I was 14 and my powers started showing up, I tried to hide them for as long as I could. Surprise, surprise, earthquake powers are kind of hard to keep under wraps, and when they realized I was the reason why things kept shaking and breaking around the neighborhood for months… let's just say I didn't really have a lot of time to pack."
"Shit, kid."
It was no secret that there were plenty of people out there who harbored anti-Enhanced sentiments, and plenty of people who took those sentiments to the extreme. Despite the fact that costumed heroes were held in almost celebrity status by most of the world, Melinda knew that the admiration and accolades stopped as soon as the cape came off. People feared Enhanceds, but the confines of strict sponsorship contracts and all the red tape from organizations like SHIELD held Enhanceds in check. Enough that regular people felt safe enough to let Enhanceds handle the work of crime-fighting and entertained enough to watch their pay-per-view fights against a campy villain-of-the-week.
She knew it all, yes, but sometimes when you've lived in the same, crummy system for long enough, you start to forget how messed-up things really are. And then there's a homeless teenager sitting in your car, and you remember all over again just how shitty the world is and how cruel people can be, all because of stupid prejudice and fear.
"I don't want your pity, you know."
Melinda studied Quake carefully. Her words and her tone suggested anger, grit, resilience and a hardened heart. But her shoulders sagged slightly, and she averted her gaze. There were hungry hollows in her cheeks and dusty shadows under her eyes. That same feeling of shame swirled around, souring the space, but Melinda was starting to pick up on another emotion, too: the feeble exhale of fatigue.
The girl was tired.
Tired of fighting for survival, for acceptance, for approval. Tired of keeping up a lie, of working a job too taxing for most adults, of battling not just supervillains and monsters, but sharp-tongued bigots and slimy landlords and greedy brand agents, too.
In retrospect, Melinda could only attribute her next decision to a sudden and acute bout of insanity, pure and simple. Anyone in their right mind would never have done what she did. And yet, someone would have to be out of their mind to let a teenager keep suffering like that, to walk away and turn a blind eye until the kid eventually wasted away to nothing or pushed herself beyond a breaking point. So maybe it was insanity, or maybe it was the first clearheaded thing Melinda had done in years. She honestly wasn't sure anymore.
"Go get your stuff, kid, then come back down and get in the car. You're coming home with me."