Evil Maybe

Chapter 8- Ree

“Dúr dom, dúr dom, dúr dom,” I mutter spitefully.

A target explodes.

“Dúr dom.”

I tend to speak in Gaelic when I’m angry. It’s something my dad does, and I seem to have picked it up.

But now I’m beyond angry. I’m infuriated. I cannot get Max out of my head, and I have no idea why. I should hate him. He hurt my Gem. He blew up my comrades. He’s a villain. And still I can’t bring myself to dislike him.

As soon as the battle was over and we had gotten back to headquarters, I had taken Genevieve to Ivy McCann to get her burn taken care of.

Ivy is our best healer, a woman with neat gray hair always pulled into a bun and steel gray eyes. She can heal most minor injuries by just waving a hand. There’s almost nothing she can’t do.

But Genevieve’s burn was not just a minor scrape, and it would take longer than normal to fix.

Ivy had so kindly allowed me to stay and watch for the first few minutes, but I had pretty much hovered over Genevieve while Ivy worked.

When I had started shooting sparks every time Gem flinched, I had been thrown out.

After pounding on the door and screaming for Gem for ten minutes straight, (the scorch marks will go away eventually) I had given up and fled to the training grounds.

Five targets already had holes through the middle, and I still didn’t feel any better. I was just about to give up on dissipating my anger when I got an idea. If I couldn’t get Max out of my head, I had to try to make my thought about him bad, and the only way to do that was to see him. If he’s right in front of me it will be easier to convince myself to hate him. And make him feel uncomfortable in the process.

I had thrown on a pair of jeans and a dark blue hoodie, then snuck off. My dad had finally gotten out of the house and was currently at a council meeting.

Leaving had never been so easy.

In the pockets of my hoodie I had stored a few of my throwing stars, just in case I’m detected. Although I probably won’t be; I’ve never been found before, and Max seems like too much of a wimp to turn me in.

My hand rests on one of my throwing stars as I walk down the streets, ready to whip one out at a moments notice.

I made a decision to sneak into EVIL headquarters and up to Max’s room in the heat of the moment, and I hadn’t really thought it through.

But I wasn’t going to back out now; I needed to see him. I needed to hate him.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure if he was born into THINK, or was just a regular guy, that he could be nice. Friendly, even. But he isn’t. He’s a villain. And I need my mind to register that.

Fifteen minutes later I’m standing below his window. Scaling the wall around the building had been simple. Finding his room was even simpler.

When I had been heckling him earlier today, I had had the foresight to put a small, circular tracker, much like the ones inside each cybertrans, on his neck when he was too busy staring at me to notice anything.

At first I was worried that it would fall off before I got to register his coordinates, but it didn’t.

I just had to follow the signal, which had led me to his exact location. The only problem was, he was not on the first floor. Or even the second. In fact, he was on the thirty-ninth floor. And the thirty-ninth floor is high. Very, very high.

But I wasn’t going to simply give up. There had to be a way to get up there. I scan the courtyard; nothing. I scan the building; nothi- wait. Something.

There are small metal fire escapes just under the windows.

I grin like a maniac. Jackpot.

It takes several tries to gather enough energy to blast myself high enough to reach it, and by the time I’ve landed, I’m almost completely devoid of energy.

But I’m here. I take a minute to look down over the EVIL compound from above, in case I ever need to plan an attack from above.

Once I finish jotting down mental notes of where everything dangerous is, I turn to the window.

Now that the hard part is over, I’m feeling almost giddy. Making myself hate a villain? Making a villain hate me- even scared of me? This is going to be fun.

A smile forms on my lips as I raise my fist, tapping lightly on his window.

“Maaax! Oh Maaaaaax!” I sing.

“You there, little villain?”

The window opens with a creak to reveal Max, who’s jaw drops.

“Ree?” He asks with disbelief.

“Pleased to see me?” I ask with a smirk.

I shove him aside and climb in, swinging my legs up in one fluid motion and landing smoothly on his floor.

“Wa- what are you doing here?!” He whispers, his voice a mixture of shock, panic, and- was that happiness?

No, that couldn’t be right. Maybe his facial expressions are just odd.

Max shuts the window, flinching when it hits the frame with a thud.

“Why so quiet? Afraid I have backup?”

I wave a throwing star.

“Don’t worry. I don’t. But I’m sure I could pound you if I had too.”

He shakes his head rapidly. “My dad is home. If he saw you he would kill you. Literally. I’m not exaggerating. He would shoot magma at your face and you would start burning up like a marshmallow!” His arms flail wildly in the air.

I tilt my head. “Aww, you actually care if I live or die!”

He tries to glare at me, but he’s not very good at it. “I’m not just concerned for you. My father would murder me too if he knew I hadn’t reported you right away.”

I laugh. He really is like any other villain, caring for no one but himself.

“Maybe he won’t have to.”

Max looks alarmed at this, but instead of immediately taking action like I would do, he simply stands there. “A- are you planning on killing me? If so, you must seriously hate me. I’ve never had a hero track me down before.” He sound almost like he’s impressed himself, but a slight tremor in his voice gives him away.

I stop smiling and narrow my eyes coldly. This is what I came for.

“I should kill you. You hurt so many of my people with those bombs you sent off. And you hurt my sister! What if she died? It would be your fault!” I start out calm, but I find it harder and harder to maintain control over myself as I go, and my voice gets higher and higher, bordering on hysteria.

“Look, I- I didn’t mean to hurt your sister. I wasn’t trying to!” He says in an almost pleading tone.

My fury bubbles to the surface. “And why should I believe you!?” I’m shouting now, and he holds a finger to his lips in a desperate attempt to make me be quiet.

“MAXIMUS, WHAT IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING THAT’S EVIL IS GOING ON UP THERE?”

A voice thunders from downstairs. Must be his dad. The one that can turn me into a marshmallow.

“UH- JUST PLAYING A VIDEO GAME!” Max yells back with his eyes closed, almost like he’s praying.

“I TOLD YOU, STOP PLAYING THAT THING!”

Even though his father can’t see him, Max shakes his head rapidly.

“OF COURSE, FATHER! I’LL STOP NOW!”

He drops onto the bed with his hand pressed to his temples. “Oh, I’m going to be in so much trouble later,” He groans.

I don’t feel any pity.

“You didn’t answer the question.”

Max looks up, and to my surprise, he still knows what I’m talking about. “I didn’t mean to hurt your sister. I wouldn’t do that to anyone. And you want to know why?”

I nod.

“Because my own sister is dead.”

My lips part in surprise. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I look into his eyes, and to my astonishment I see the same sad look that my father gets every time he talks about my mother. The same look that I get. He’s telling the truth.

The practical part of my brain tells me that this doesn’t impact me. His family are villains. That means his sister is- was- a villain. I should be glad she’s dead.

I want to smirk, to tell him that I don’t care. I want to tell him that I’m a hero, and heroes kill villains. That they don’t feel sympathy for them. I open my mouth to say this, but that is not what comes out.

“I’m sorry.”

I clap my hand to my mouth, horrified. I said sorry to someone from EVIL.

My eyes close and I take a rattling breath, then perch on the edge of his bed.

“Look here, Gearbrain. If you repeat what I said to anyone, I will zap you until your insides are on the outside. Got it?”

He looks numb, in a state of disbelief. Almost robotically he nods his head up and down, up and down, up and down until I tell him to stop, that it’s creeping me out.

When he comes out of whatever reverie he was in (it takes a few more zombie nods), he turns to look at me in exasperation. “And just for the record, it’s not Gearbrain either. It’s Max.”

“Although,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, “Gearbrain does sound better than Maximus.”

For a moment I just stare at him. Then I start laughing , and I can’t stop. I laugh so hard that I choke, so hard that I fall to the floor, so hard that even Max starts laughing.

Besides being totally unexpected, he sounded so much like me in that moment. I’m constantly reminding people that my name is Ree, not Riana, and it felt nice to hear people besides myself complaining about their names.

When we both finally stop laughing enough to breath, Max launched into speech.

“And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fa-"

He cuts of abruptly at my strange look. Heat rises to his cheeks, and he gives me a sheepish look that makes me forget all about why I was here- not that I wasn’t already starting to forget.

“It’s Shakespeare.” He tells me with a rueful smile.

“My mother used to read it to me.”

I’m about to question his use of the words “used to”, but before I get the chance, we hear footsteps pounding up the stairs.

Whether it was our laughter or something else entirely that drew Max’s dad up to investigate I will never know; I was up and to the window before he even reached the next step.