Villains Wear Masks

“It tore me apart. But I learned an important lesson. You can’t count on anyone, especially your heroes.”

~ Buddy Pine (Syndrome)

“I thought you said you were going to capture Momentum.”

Mischief laid back in his chair, completely at ease, “It’s not my fault if Silver Streak showed up first tonight.”

Trevor ran his fingers through his hair, making it even messier than before. Without Ian he was already falling into disrepair. Papers were pilling themselves on his desk and he was missing meetings left and right. Not to mention the guy Trevor wanted to find Momentum was not doing his job. Maybe choosing Ian’s person for the job would’ve been better. Maybe he should’ve trust Ian.

“Well, why didn’t you catch him when you had the chance the other day?” Trevor accused.

He shrugged. “The police came pretty quickly, and I’m not itching to have the murder of a couple cops added to my rap sheet. You know how they are about cop killers.”

Trevor gave the villain a death glare, “If you don’t get me Momentum, you’ll have much more to worry about than the cops.”

Mischief chuckled and raised his eyebrows at the CEO, “I know you think you have power over me, but trust me, I have the real power over you. While your head of Scientific Research was having a lot of convenient troubles finding the identities of the supers, I was able to find them much faster. I have the information you need. Who needs me to go after Momentum if you can go after his alter ego?”

The information he was teasing was exactly what Trevor needed, but he had no way to find out if Mischief was lying or not.

Thankfully his phone buzzed with a text message before Mischief had time to keep bragging. But, as soon as he saw the message, he knew he wouldn’t know the truth for a bit longer.

“My friend’s mother is in the hospital,” Trevor affirmed to himself out loud.

Mischief nodded his head. “Of course, I can see that would make you want to leave, but listen to this first. Your head of the Scientific Research team, you may want to check where his loyalties lie. Ask him about MASKED. You’d be surprised at his response.”

Trevor arrived fairly quickly to the hospital considering there had been traffic due to the superhero fight over April Watson only a couple of blocks over. Of course the minute she shows back up in the limelight, she’s being put on display by Black Knight.

The last time Trevor had stepped foot in the building had been three months ago, when he witnessed the speedster running away from the scene of the crime after killing his father. No matter what Lacey Carlton claimed, he knew his father was killed by her company because of who he was. Why wouldn’t she deny it? The “good guys” have to keep up the façade or else people would stop believing in them.

Xander’s mother was being kept in the same ward as his father had been, the noticeable difference between the two incidences being that there were no security guards guarding the ward this time around.

“What are you doing here?”

Trevor stared down at John Washington, Xander’s other friend. He hated Trevor just because his father laid off John’s parents. Well, guess what? Rossi Corp fired a lot of people. He should just get over it.

“I heard Xander’s mom had been hurt,” Trevor responded, not giving up his ground. The waiting room was full of some women in waitress outfits, presumably Miss Mendez’s coworkers, a black family, presumably John’s. “I’m here for my friend.”

John gave him a look full of unfathomable hatred. For some reason it looked to be even harsher than the last time Trevor had seen him. Certainly he had done nothing in that time to warrant even more hatred.

“You’re still going to call him that after everything you’ve done?”

Trevor furrowed his eyebrows. “I know you don’t like me because of my father, but that is no excuse for me to stop having friends. I’ve done nothing to hurt Xander. If anything his association with a high ranking Kingdom City citizen only helps him, not hurts.”

At that moment Xander walked in to the room. He saw the two boys and immediately knew what was going on. “It’s okay, John.”

John looked at Xander incredulously. “He has no right to be here after-”

Xander shook his head, “Right now he’s here because he’s my friend. Right now I need more of those.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to her?” Trevor asked.

“I may have an answer.”

They all turned to see a short black woman in a suit with tall heels. Her hair was viciously pulled back from her face in a tight bun, not one piece out of place. The suit was pressed to perfection and her nails manicured. Trevor had never seen this woman before, but he could figure she was someone important.

“Great,” Trevor responded, but she wasn’t looking at him.

“Xander, I need to speak to you real quick.”

Trevor felt like he had just been pushed over. He was the one who was the CEO of a multibillion dollar company. He was the one who had all of the power, and yet he wasn’t getting the information he asked for?

The woman pulled Xander away from the waiting room, one of the girls in the waiting room, who looked vaguely famililar, followed. Trevor wasn’t as eager as the girl was, Xander would surely tell him what was up when he got back.

Meanwhile the woman pulled Xander and Mera into an empty surgery room, the glint of the silver instruments reflecting against the door windows as she closed it.

“I missed you,” Mera exclaimed, hugging the woman.

“Me too.”

Xander raised his hand, “Um, who are you?”

She let go of his girlfriend and smiled sharply. “My name is Agent Argent. I work for MASKED.”

“That still doesn’t explain this,” Xander responded, gesturing between the two women.

Argent smile softened. “Mera is my niece.”

“Your aunt is a secret agent?”

Mera shrugged. “Yeah, I just never thought that was important.”

“Not important? I think this is very cool and something I would’ve been delighted to know.”

“There are more important things we need to discuss, Momentum,” Argent butted in, “and you’re going to want to know.”

Calling him by his superhero alter ego certainly caught his attention. Though, he should’ve known a top secret superhero organization would’ve figured out his identity some way.

“Okay, shoot.”

She took a breath. “Your mother didn’t just fall faint, nor did she have some sort of heart attack.”

Xander nodded, he had already overheard the doctors talking about his mother’s strange condition. It was something they said they hadn’t seen in years.

“Your mother was a victim of The Pill.”

That took a moment to register. “Wait, are you telling me my mom took a drug that doesn’t exist anymore? My mother is no drug addict, and I thought The Pill was destroyed along with X’s legacy.”

Argent sadly shook her head, looking remorseful. “We’ve been getting suspicions for almost a year that X was planning something with people on the outside. Rossi Corp also smelled something fishy, which was why we had an agent go in undercover to check things out, make sure they didn’t get too close. Then, three months ago someone took a vial of Sonic’s blood and reverse engineered the serum that gave her powers. The Black Tiger gang then used that serum to make what we know as The Pill. But Rossi Corp knew something was going on, so they tried to buy some of the serum to see what they could do with it. We suspect the gang arranged the meeting to get rid of the CEO and stop him from potentially revealing their plan.

“MASKED is almost certain now that X has no way to reach the outside, so the gang is acting of their own accord, probably craving the power X once had over the city. The last time The Pill was created when the gang accidently found a crate of the serum and messed around with it. This time X isn’t here to be in charge, but the gang is still distributing it around the city in small portions. We suspect that they’ve been testing it on citizens through faux Advil medication, which is what happened to your mother.”

Xander found the nearest chair and sat down. “So, my mother overdosed on The Pill? Will she be okay?”

The agent shrugged. “We don’t know. Of the other cases we’ve managed to track down so far the victims just took enough to be addicted and unproductive. She must’ve taken a very large dosage to be comatose like this.”

“Does this mean Paul Rossi actually was murdered?”

If there was a question she was expecting, it wasn’t that one. “Well, yes. We think a gang member broke into the hospital, stole a nurse’s outfit, and gave him the wrong medication to induce the heart failure.”

“And you just let my friend go on believing that I killed his father?” Xander asked, his tone cold.

“Well, we-”

“And you let him hire villains to come after me? You know how close I was to being handed over to Trevor? He would’ve murdered me in cold blood for nothing!”

Mera stepped in and held Xander back, calming him down enough to let her aunt answer, “We couldn’t let Rossi Corp know more about X. If they joined his cause The Pill would be unstoppable.”

“So you were happy to sacrifice me, an innocent? Because I’m just another kid from the bad side of town, I’m expendable, is that it? Do I not matter?”

“Xander! That’s not what she did!” Mera tried to interject.

Argent narrowed her eyes. “You were never in any real danger. Our agent made sure Trevor never got close to you.”

Xander rolled his eyes in retort, “Yeah, and you made sure your agent got close enough to Trevor to find out everything, did you? That was a really shitty thing to do, you know that? Even Trevor doesn’t deserve to have a false love.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she responded, off the offensive and now fearfully curious.

Xander furrowed his eyebrows, much calmer. “You didn’t know how close they got? I figured you ordered him to do that.”

“No, Ian Thompson was not supposed to get that kind of involved.”

And involved he was.

At that exact moment, Trevor Rossi spotted the last person he expected to find hanging around Miss Mendez’s room.

“Ian?”

He turned and his face fell as it met Trevor’s. “Um, hey.”

“What are you doing here?”

Ian shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “You know, just hanging.”

Trevor raised his brows. “You know you’re awful at lying.”

“Yep, I’ve always had trouble in that area,” Ian agreed, laughing nervously.

“But you had no trouble lying to me for almost nine months.”

Ian blanched. “What?”

Trevor shrugged, “Oh, nothing. Just that you forgot to mention exactly what it was from your past you were trying to hide. You want to tell me about those gap years of yours after high school or should I say what I’ve found out?”

The tension was so thick you could’ve cut it with a knife. Ian had no idea how much Trevor knew, and Trevor had no idea just how much he knew.

Ian stayed tight lipped, so Trevor let him in on what he knew, “What is MASKED?”

Raised eyebrows met Trevor. “You mean those things supers wear?”

Under old circumstances, the snarky response would’ve made Trevor smile. “No, I’m talking about an organization. You’re a part of them, aren’t you?”

Ian turned sour, “See, this is what I meant when I said we weren’t equals. You think you have the right to know everything about me. You’ve even stooped low enough to accuse me of being a part of secret superhero organizations.”

“I never said they were involved with supers.”

He recovered quickly, “I can guess with a name like that. It’s not really conspicuous. Besides, you have no right to know about me anymore, we’re over.”

“But you’re still my employee,” Trevor argued, “and that means you have to answer to your boss. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be fired.”

The daggers Ian was staring became more prominent. “Fine, what do you want to know?”

“I want to know everything that you’ve been keeping from me.” Trevor’s anger was rising slowly to the surface. “I want to know why you’re so distant.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes, I really do. I think I deserve to know.”

“Fine! You want to know why I’m like this? It’s because I have secrets, so many secrets all bundled up inside of me that I’m itching to burst and set them free. Are you sure you want to know? Revealing the truth is like lightning a match, it can bring light, or it can set your world on fire. Trust me, these truths will set your world on fire.”

Trevor stepped closer. “I think you’ve kept secrets from me for long enough.”

“Let’s start by listing off my problems, shall we?” Ian asked rhetorically, anger clouding his judgment. “First I found out in high school that my best friend was a superhero and right after that my sister confesses her love to a super villain and my best friend accidentally murders my sister. Then I get the shock of my life that she wasn’t actually dead, just that she was kidnapped by said super villain. Then, another shock, she actually did die and was brought back to life with superpowers over shadows and darkness and was still in love with and working with the super villain. Then she tried to murder all of us and take away my best friend’s powers. Every time I go to visit her at the MASKED stronghold she’s being kept in, all I see is a ghost of her former self. Her powers have nowhere to turn but inwards and she gets consumed by the shadows swarming her mind.

“And right after high school MASKED decides to recruit the conspiracy theorist with a superhero best friend and connections within the White House. The first mission they send me on? I get to work for a company that hates my best friend and would probably exploit my sister if given the chance. Then, the one light I found there, the one source of happiness I had in a long time, gets close to finding out everything I had to keep from him to be keep him safe. How are you supposed to choose between duty and your heart? The right thing for you or for the greater good? It’s not like I meant to fall for you. It’s not like I could control my heart. But, now that I did, I can’t be anywhere near you.”

“What have you been keeping from me?” Trevor pushed, seeing how vulnerable of a state Ian was in.

“Momentum isn’t some secret agent of Carlton Laboratories.”

Trevor’s eyes widened hungrily, “Then who is he?” Trevor was barely listening to the way Ian was baring his heart out to him. All he needed was the truth. He only wanted his father’s killer’s identity, nothing else. He was on the edge, past caring about Ian’s motivations.

Ian’s own eyes widened at something behind Trevor. Trevor took a glance and saw the short black woman reentering the waiting room with Xander and he girl from the waiting room in tow. It took a couple of glances between the two to get it.

“Him? You knew who he was all along and you kept it from me? You knew it was someone close to me and you let me go on believing he was working for the opposition?”

“He’s not-”

Trevor shook his head, laughing hysterically now. “No, this whole thing was a conspiracy against me, wasn’t it? Against my father. You guys corrupted my childhood best friend and manipulated him into murdering my father just because he was getting close to some of your well-kept information? You let me fall for you just to grab at what I knew? I entrusted you with everything, and you gave it all to the opposition?”

“Trevor, that’s not what-”

“And now something has backfired and hurt his mom, hasn’t it? Your little plan is failing. Maybe I’ll just have to dig a little further into my father’s notes and figure out exactly what it was he found out about you.”

“Please, you don’t understand.”

Trevor shook his head. “I understand perfectly fine.”

And, oh how he thought he did.