When my throbbing head began making itself known through the depths of unconsciousness, I could not resist a small groan of pain. Although my skull was thick, it objected to being hit numerous times in the same day.

I tried to keep as still as possible, but soon realized that keeping perfectly still was the only thing that I could actually do at the moment. Ropes were wrapped painfully tight around my legs, arms, and body.

My thoughts flitted to the last thing I had been thinking before I passed out. Eyes still closed, I reached out with my mind to melt the ropes away. If I could only make them turn to liquid, I would know that I was still Death’s Dancer. My fall from the tower had been some sort of fluke, likely brought on by exhaustion.

The ropes, however, remained firmly in place, digging into my skin. All my efforts accomplished was increasing my headache and sending pain shooting up my right arm. I winced.

“So good to see you awake at last.” The voice came from somewhere to my left and sounded vaguely familiar. “I was worried that our recovery team had gotten a bit... overenthusiastic.”

Opening my eyes, I squinted in the direction of the voice, dazzled by the bright lights. Obligingly, its owner moved closer, and I was able to make out the plain features of Mr. Falcus, resplendent in another average grey suit. I glared at him and tugged ineffectually at my bound arms. There was nothing I would rather do than smack that smug smirk off his face. Right after I smacked myself for being so stupid. Sera had been telling the truth after all – RUBE wasn’t on my side.

I let my breath out in a low hiss of air and swallowed hard to prevent myself from saying the first thing that came to mind. From Mr. Falcus’ self-satisfied grin I could bet there was nothing he would like better than seeing my surprise or indignation at his betrayal.

Instead, I pasted my patented Death’s Dancer Insane Grin on my face and greeted him politely. “Mr. Falcus. How lovely to see you here.”

A brief scowl flickered across his face, like a bolt of lightning parting the clouds, but his smile returned quickly. “Nice of you to drop by,” he retorted, just as politely.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” I asked, looking around ineffectually for Ms. Ishida. The room was pitch-black, aside from a single lamp shining into my face. A hundred RUBE agents could have been in the room, I had no way of knowing.

This time his smile disappeared and did not return. “That is none of your concern.” He snapped, looking down in the pretense of flicking invisible dust from his suit jacket.

“She got hurt in that explosion you arranged, didn’t she?” I pouted in mock sympathy, surprised at how much I was enjoying this conversation. If only I weren’t tied to a chair, bereft of superpowers, with my right arm on fire and my head pounding, I would be happy bantering all night. Besides, the more I got him talking, the more he might reveal about what precisely was going on and where he was holding me.

“We all make sacrifices for the job.” Mr. Falcus said tightly, glancing back over his shoulder at something, or someone, hidden in the shadows.

“You generally kidnap innocent girls for your job?” I said, then winced. Whatever I might be, I certainly was not innocent. In my eagerness to keep him talking I had given him a rather obvious opportunity to ridicule me, and he was not one to pass that up.

“Innocent?” He snorted. “You, the person who has murdered at least two people in cold blood, blown up a building, and robbed the city of millions of dollars?”

“All on your orders,” I fired back, but it was a weak rebuttal, and we both knew it. “Why won’t my powers work?”

Stupid. In my eagerness to move on from my previous mistake I had just given away the one advantage I might have held in this situation. At least my ill-advised comment distracted him though, giving me an opportunity to start picking at the knots holding my arms to the chair. Superpowers definitely made it easier to escape, but we were all taught basic escapology at the Academy.

Mr. Falcus seemed pleased by this question, which made the knots in my stomach squirm themselves even tighter. “I’m so glad you asked,” he said, smiling at me. “It really is an interesting and fascinating subject. You see, your powers are not at all natural to you, but were implanted...”

“...with a special device that you stuck in my brain, yes I know,” I cut him off, just to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face.

It worked, but only for a moment.

“How did you...” he began, then stopped. “Ah, the deserter. Yes, that makes sense.”

I resisted the urge to glower at him and instead kept a completely neutral expression.

“Well, what you probably don’t know is that we can turn your powers on and off with the push of a button,” he said, his smile returning with reinforcements.

“You’re lying,” I said immediately, but the words fell flat, even to my own ears. Unease percolated in my stomach. It couldn’t be true. I was tired, that was all. He was lying, just as Sera had been lying about that, and if I just waited a few more minutes I would be able to melt his feet into the floor. With that thought in mind, I renewed my careful untying of the knots at my wrists. They were starting to loosen, but I needed to keep him talking.

“Believe that if you want to,” Mr. Falcus said. “But the fact is that I pressed a button and now you are lying helplessly within my grasp instead of facing down Fireball.”

I bit my tongue to keep from asking how he had known where I was going. I would be damned if I played into his hands like that. Again.

“Alright, then kill me,” I said instead, the blood from my bitten tongue emboldening me. Something about the taste of iron made me feel stronger. I had already almost died twice tonight after all, once more probably wouldn’t be that bad.

“What?” Mr. Falcus was speechless for a rare, previous moment.

“Kill me,” I repeated, throwing it out like a dare. “You obviously have the ability and the motivation to do it, so why am I sitting here listening to you babble when I could be peacefully roasting in the underworld?”

“You misunderstand.”

“Do I?”

“Yes! We need so much more from you than just a dead body,” Mr. Falcus said, shaking his head. “We didn’t provide you with years of training just to kill you and quietly dispose of the evidence.”

“What did you do it for, then? Since you obviously didn’t plan for me to become a supervillain.”

There was a long silence from Mr. Falcus, and when he spoke again I was surprised to hear his voice crackling with restrained anger. “You were supposed to be a great supervillain. Until you started thinking that you could run around and ignore all the carefully created rules that keep everything running smoothly. Our psychological analysis showed that you had all the traits of a supervillain – egotism, perseverance, a desire to prove yourself...”

He trailed off, eyes focused on something only he could see. Then he shook himself and graced me with a truly ferocious scowl. “We gave you a damned good superpower too, and now it’s all going to be wasted!”

“So sorry to inconvenience you,” I said sarcastically. They had messed around with my brain on the basis of some stupid psychological test given to me when I was twelve, and he had the gall to be upset? “If I’d realized what a burden it was for you to find the ideal kids to stick microchips in, I would obviously have behaved myself like a good little supervillain.”

Mr. Falcus only smirked, shaking his head as though I were a small child who just said something foolish, yet adorable. There was a small clatter in the darkness behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder, giving me the opening I had been waiting for.

As soon as his eyes were off me, I gave the knots around my wrists a final tug, and they finally gave up their grip. Elation surged through me, and I snatched the ropes before they could fall to the floor, twisting them back around my wrists. It wouldn’t stand up to close inspection, but if Mr. Falcus didn’t look too closely he wouldn’t notice my wrists were now free. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

He turned back to face me, and began stalking around my chair, like a lion circling its prey. I curled my hands around the arms of the chair, every muscle in my body tense and waiting for him to get just a bit closer to my chair. Mr. Falcus leaned over my shoulder. “If I were you...”

He didn’t get to finish that sentence, because I hurled the chair backwards into him. My legs were obviously still tied to it, so there was a tremendous crash as the two of us went down. I scrambled to get to my feet first, shaking myself free from the wreckage of the chair as much as I could. Without thinking, I rolled over and tried to push myself up using my right arm.

The pain that had been a constant presence since I woke up suddenly magnified a hundred times, and I crumpled to the ground again with a scream, clutching the arm to my side. I must have been distracted by the conversation, and by the fact that my arm was being held perfectly still, but it certainly felt like it was broken. Great. Just what I needed.

I ground my teeth together, managing to kneel and push myself up one-handed. There were still chair legs firmly attached to my calves and something sharp was digging into my back, but I could deal with that later. For now, I needed to focus on getting out of here.

A hand grabbed my ankle, trying to pull me back down to the floor. It was Mr. Falcus, recovered at least partially from my surprise attack.

I yanked my foot free of his hand and kicked him in the stomach with it. Hard. He grunted and fell back to the floor. I didn’t wait for him to recover again. A quick glance around the room revealed a faint crack of light at floor level off to my right – a door. I raced for the light without bothering to look around the rest of the room.

That was how I ran headfirst into someone else, a tall, strongly built man. He stepped from the shadows into my path and stood impassively as I bounced off him and wound up on the floor, clutching my broken arm to my chest.

He put one heavy foot on my stomach to discourage me from getting up, and that was all it took to defeat me. My teacher in unarmed combat back at the Academy had always warned me I was too reliant on my superpowers to get me out of bad situations, but I had scoffed at him. After all, when would I be without my superpowers?

Hot, bitter tears blurred my vision, but even through those and in the darkness the tall figure looked oddly familiar. He was clean-shaven, with close cropped hair of an indeterminate colour in the gloom.

“Thank you, Peter,” Mr. Falcus’ voice came from behind me. It was a little strained, but I was too angry to feel any satisfaction.

“What should I do with her?” Peter asked, in a rumbling voice that I could have sworn I had heard somewhere else before.

“Might as well take her to the roof early. That should keep her from making another foolish escape attempt.”

Peter lifted his foot from my chest, allowing air to fill my slightly crushed lungs. He bent down and gripped my arms tightly, easily lifting me off the ground so I dangled before him like an infant. His tight grip made my right arm scream with pain, sending speckles of light flickering across my vision. I blinked them away, trying to focus on Peter’s face, figure out where I recognized him from.

The realization came to me with a sudden flash of insight. I just had to picture him in faded jeans and a t-shirt, together with a lot more hair, and it immediately became clear who this was. “Abe?”

Abe winked.

I gaped at him, barely able to believe my eyes. Instead of the large, incredibly hairy man I had recruited as one of my minions, Abe was now entirely clean-shaven and looked like an ordinary young man.

“What are you doing here?” My bewilderment at finding him here drove all thoughts of Mr. Falcus from my head. I dangled unresistingly in Abe’s strong grip, trying to get a grip on what was going on. First Sera, now Abe – did everyone have a secret identity in this ridiculous city?

“He works for us, just like you did,” Mr. Falcus answered for him. “We planted him in that smuggling ring months ago, to keep an eye on you.”

“But how could you possibly know I would go there?” I was still staring at Abe, transfixed by the sight of his clean-shaven face.

“Ah yes, I’m sure you thought you were so clever stealing that file from Principal Sicarius’ office, with conveniently listed secret lairs and potential minions,” Mr. Falcus said. “Of course we had backup plans if you didn’t show the initiative to steal that file, but you were so cooperative, at least at the beginning.”

My stomach churned, rebelling against this idea that the Rubes had been controlling my every action. I couldn’t spend too much time dwelling on that though, because Abe – no, Peter – was carrying me out of the room, through the door that had so nearly been my escape route.

The hallway was brightly lit and lined with windows. I tried to look through them to see where we were, but all I saw was a reflection of myself and Peter. I scowled at the reflection and turned my gaze away.

He carried me into an elevator, Mr. Falcus following behind us, and a short ride later the elevator dinged, signalling our destination. Wherever that might be. Down another short hallway, and then Mr. Falcus wrestled open a door.

Wind whistled into the corridor, stealing my breath away. As we emerged onto the rooftop, I realized I knew exactly where we were. It was the tallest tower in the city, exactly where I had asked Fireball to meet me for a final showdown. I should have known.

Peter carried me over to the tower’s concrete spire, jutting up from the rooftop to stab the night sky, and proceeded to tape my arms and legs to the wall with duct tape, of all things. I happened to glance down, and realized there was a darker lump of shadow at my feet.

“We couldn’t let that girl get away with interfering in our plans.” Mr. Falcus’ voice in my ear made me jerk against my restraints.

“What girl?”

In response, Mr. Falcus nudged the lump of shadow. It rolled over easily, revealing a pale face that stared up at the sky. The shadow was a body, dressed in all black, with a black cloak wrapped around it.

“Sera.” Her name fell from my mouth and hung in the air between us.

My heart thumped painfully in my chest, and the world spun around me. If I hadn’t been held upright by the duct tape I might have fallen. I told her to stay away from the tower tonight. Why couldn’t she have listened to me? It was such a simple request.

Even as I thought this, I had to acknowledge that I had known Sera would come to the tower. I was about to face down her boss, Fireball. She wouldn’t have just stood idly by and let that happen.

My eyes were glued to her face. She looked sad and shocked at the same time. It was amazing how much of her personality still managed to show through, even when she was nothing but a dead body. Dead, dead, dead. The word pounded through me with every heartbeat, every stab of pain from my broken arm.

“It’s such a pity you killed her. She had such a bright future ahead of her.” Mr. Falcus was talking again, but I couldn’t get his words to make sense in my head.

“What?”

“You killed her,” Mr. Falcus repeated. “I’m sure Fireball won’t be inclined towards mercy once he sees you standing over her dead body, knife in hand.”

“Knife?” I couldn’t seem to make sense of anything he was saying. The world wouldn’t stop spinning around me, the skyline of the city heaving up and down like waves on an ocean.

A sharp pain in my right arm directed my attention to Peter once again, and I discovered he was now busily taping a knife to my right hand. That made the pieces slide into place at last.

Mr. Falcus checked his wristwatch, a gleam of gold against his dark suit. “1:50. I think it’s time for us to bid you farewell. Give Fireball my regards.”

And with that, Mr. Falcus and Peter abandoned the roof, leaving me alone with nothing to do but stare at the face of my almost-friend Sera, and wait for a superhero to come finish me off.