She stood in the midst of the cheering, yelling crowd, watching the floats drive by one-by-one. "It's the Council!" someone shouted. The Council float came into view, all four members waving and smiling at everybody. Her gut clenched. She knew what was coming next.
"It's Sketch's team!" the same voice shouted, and the noise of the crowd grew dim as her attention fixed upon the six figures standing atop the float.
"Go," said a voice to her left. She looked and saw Frostbite, grinning eerily. "Go, Maggie, do what you have to do. This is your only chance. Otherwise you'll never get the helmet." She handed Maggie an icicle shaped like a spear. "Kill them all—or are you not villain enough?"
Maggie opened her mouth to protest that she couldn't kill six people with a single icicle, not all at once anyway, but at that moment, another float came into view. Max's float, with the glass city surrounding him. Even from a distance she could see that he was wearing his ruby bracelet. As she watched, he brought his wrist up to his mouth and spoke into it. "Maggie, where are you?" The voice came through her own bracelet, as if it were one of the Renegades' communicator bands.
"I'm here," she told him, forgetting she was still holding the icicle.
"You know, for a moment I thought we were friends," he said sadly, before pointing straight at her and shouting, "She's there! Looks like she stole one of Frostbite's icicles! Arrest her before she steals anything else!"
The six Renegades on Sketch's float all turned to look at her, and before she had time to react, Nova thrust her palm toward Maggie and fire came shooting out. "I always knew she was a villain," she said matter-of-factly.
"Me too." Callum's float was rolling toward the commotion, sporting not the intricate, artistic sculpture that usually bore his name, but instead a life-sized bronze statue of Callum himself. "She's the one who killed me, you know."
"I always knew she was a villain too," spoke up an unfamiliar voice, and through the flames and haze, the indistinct figure of a girl around twenty emerged. "That's why I left her when she was a baby. That's why I never came back for her. I knew she was nothing but a no-good, selfish, rotten VILLAIN!"
Maggie jerked awake, panting heavily, her heart racing as her arms lashed out at enemies who weren't there. She sat up and whipped her head from side to side, seeing nothing but blackness surrounding her. Her hands scrabbled around for something to hold onto, and finally connected with a threadbare blanket bunched up around her knees.
Her heart rate slowly returned to normal as she became cognizant of where she was and what had just happened. She cursed under her breath. Stupid nightmare. It didn't even make sense. It had so many flaws, she should have recognized it as a false reality the moment she'd found herself right there in the middle of everything while the floats were going by. It had never been part of the plan for her to be there. And Frostbite wanted to kill Sketch's team with fire, not with an icicle, and the bracelets weren't communicators, and Nova couldn't manipulate fire, and statues didn't talk, and Maggie's sister—
She cursed again, hating the fact that her brain had dredged up that again, so many years after she'd decided she was better off without an older sister. She didn't care that the girl had left and never looked back. She probably would've done the same thing. Their parents were already dead; what six-year-old kid would want to stick around and care for a wounded prodigy baby all by herself?
For that matter, where was the concrete proof that she'd ever even had an older sister? All she had to go on was the word of the Prodigy Children's Home employees, and all they had to go on was the word of the landlord who'd found her, and it was quite possible that he was entirely mistaken.
She eased back down onto the uncomfortable mattress, trying to shoo away the images from the nightmare. Frostbite's leer. Max's accusing face. The Callum statue…
Maggie shivered and pulled the worn blanket up over her head, like a small child who was afraid of shifting shadows in her bedroom, which was ridiculous because Maggie's 'bedroom' was pitch black, and covering her face didn't block out anything.
She brought her right hand up to the ruby bracelet on her left wrist. She'd considered cutting it off before she went to bed, figuring the gems would be painful if she accidentally laid on them while she was sleeping. But she couldn't bring herself to do it, so against her better judgment, she'd kept the bracelet on. She fingered it now, trying not to think about the warmth of Max's fingers as he'd tied it off for her, and the broad grin that had split his features when she'd suggested—against every fiber of common sense in her body—that they hang out again sometime soon. Max had immediately accepted, and they'd set up a time before Maggie had given enough thought to how pointless this whole thing was. What did she think she was doing, forging a—a friendship, or whatever this was, with a hero like Max Everhart? It's not like anything would ever work out between them. As soon as Max got to know the real her, the villain Maggie, he'd want nothing to do with her anymore. So why was she even putting herself through all this nonsense? She needed to focus on what really mattered.
A vision of the golden helmet swarmed in front of her eyes, but it was quickly followed by a dark figure with a scythe, a wretched scream, an abrupt shift from miraculous hope to the reality that nothing good ever lasted. She bit the insides of her cheeks and tried to change the direction of her thoughts. No, not the last time I touched the helmet. This time. When everyone else is at the parade…
Images from her nightmare were now all she could see, and Maggie let out the start of a frustrated howl before halting her breath. The last thing she needed was for her fellow gang members to hear her making tormented sounds during the night and decide she was too weak to be their leader.
Fingering the bracelet again, Maggie searched around for a safe topic and finally remembered the watch factory. Block after block after block of pure silver, being formed into components that would become fancy, expensive watches like the one still stored in the secret compartment under her bed. She needed to figure out a way to get in there, to snag a few more of the ritzy timepieces, or at least some of the silver plates. Of course, she should probably bring the one she already had to the pawn shop beforehand, just to see how much it was worth.
She tried to keep her mind on watches, and expensive jewelry, and all the shiny objects that would fetch her an impressive sum at August Pawn. But whenever she envisioned herself holding the binoculars to her eyes and staring into the windows of the watch factory, all she could think about was Max sitting next to her, telling her he'd brought her there because he thought she might like it.
Well. Thinking about Max was certainly better than reliving the stuff of nightmares, so she gave in and allowed herself to relax into the memory as she drifted off to sleep.
Maggie woke up to the sound and feeling of feet chasing each other across the stage. A whiny, high-pitched voice joined in, and Maggie groaned, reaching over to turn on her lamp. Using the light from the lamp to guide her, she walked over to the side wall, where the light switch was located. She flipped it upward, turning on the bright floodlights that doused the entire stage.
The running and squealing stopped. "Oooh, Squirt, you woke up the Boss, you're in trou-ble!" came Yasmin's taunting voice.
"Well, I wouldn't have been running at all if you weren't chasing me with those freaky knives of yours," Chester's voice spat back angrily.
Maggie rolled her eyes. It shouldn't be her job to play referee between feuding children, but this was going to escalate into an all-out war if she didn't step in. She whipped open the door that faced outward toward the nonexistent audience, and there were Chester and Yasmin, standing about ten feet away from each other, glaring at one another.
"You nuisances woke me up," she growled.
Chester shrank back, his eyes going wide and fearful. "S-sorry, ma'am."
Yasmin just gave her a haughty look, then examined her bladed fingertips as one might examine a nail. "I wasn't going to do anything to him. He just started running."
"And you started chasing him," Maggie pointed out. "Dagger, do remember that you are only here as a result of my good will. If you're going to be causing problems and running around waking me up, then you won't be able to stay."
Yasmin rolled her eyes, but only asked, "Is there a meeting tonight?"
"It's Friday," Maggie told her in response. "Yes, there's a meeting, and you all better be there, because our newest member is coming. Which reminds me…" She cut a steely glare first at Yasmin, then at Chester. "I am the one who controls which information our new member gets, and what we'll be keeping from her for now. Understand?"
Both children nodded, and Maggie bestowed them with one final evil eye before retreating to her quarters.
She went straight to the bag under her bed, and transferred its contents to her purse. Throwing the purse on her shoulder, she stalked off the stage, through the back hallway, and out the back door before she could get caught up in any more drama between gang members.
The pawn shop was just the way she liked it when she arrived—no other customers, no one at all except for August and his grown daughter, Mara. Mara greeted Maggie with her usual nod and small smile, while August greeted her in his usual way as well—a gruff, "Whatchu got for me today, kid?"
"This," said Maggie, pulling the sapphire earring out of her purse. "And this." She handed him the shoe buckle.
August stared at the two items and then raised his unimpressed eyes to her face. "I hope you're not expecting more than a dollar or two."
Maggie crossed her arms over her chest. "The stone in that earring is sapphire. It's worth a lot more than a dollar."
August grumbled incoherently and handed her a respectable amount of cash. "Anything else?"
"This." Maggie pulled the watch out of her purse and plunked it in front of him. His eyes widened subtly as he reached out to take hold of it.
"Now this is quite the specimen," he mused, inspecting the silver multifaceted band, the gold plating, the diamonds around the face. "Where did you get it?"
"I don't see why that's relevant."
August's green eyes appraised her coldly. "I was merely asking."
She flushed. August may be shrewd and borderline unfriendly, but he was not an ignorant man. After all these years, she knew he had a pretty good idea of how she obtained the items she traded with him almost daily. But he never explicitly called her out on it or refused to do business with her the way a couple of the other pawn shop owners around the city had started doing, which was why he remained her only reliable source of income.
"How much will you give me for it?" she asked brusquely.
August told her the figure, and her eyes nearly popped out of her head. It was by far the most expensive item she'd ever traded. If she could snag even just a few more of these from the factory, she'd be set for a very long time.
"Okay," she answered, trying not to let her excitement show through. "That sounds reasonable."
"Where's all this money going, anyway, kid?" August asked as he filled an envelope with the cash for her. "College fund?"
"What are you, my grandfather?" Maggie scoffed. "It's none of your business." She took the cash and turned back toward the door, but Mara spoke up.
"You could, you know. Go to college someday. I heard they're starting to open back up all over the country. You could study business or—I don't know, whatever suits your fancy."
Maggie turned around and stared at the woman in disbelief. "College?" Maggie had a basic idea of what college was, but it was an old construct, one that hadn't really existed since before the Age of Anarchy. Not here in Gatlon City, anyway. All she really knew about college was that it was a form of school, and she'd had enough of that during her boring lessons at the children's home.
"Yeah," said Mara, her face earnest. "It could be a good option. You know, depending on what you want to do in the future."
"I already know what I want to do in the future," Maggie told her haughtily. "And it doesn't involve college."
But as she pulled open the heavy wooden door and stepped outside into the morning air, a thought came that stopped her short. She really didn't know what she wanted to do in the future. All of her plans for the last three years had revolved around obtaining Ace Anarchy's helmet and declaring herself the world's newest supervillain. But then what? Once she'd asserted her power over the city—what would she actually do?