Chapter Twenty-Eight – Guilt

Emily came back home feeling… strangely energised. She’d walked into a tough social situation and it had all more or less played out as she wanted it to. She got what she wanted in the end, and more even, and she probably hadn’t looked bad doing it.

It was refreshing, it made her feel… both guilty and good. It made her… Emily hesitated. Was this how extroverts felt?

No wonder they spent so much time talking to people.

If only it wasn’t impossible for her to act that way without ample preparation. She wished she could but she was afraid that she hadn’t been born with the right genes for that.

Her good mood helped her endure the added rambunctiousness of her sisters. Teddy and Trinity were play-fighting all the way back, and Athena was loudly slurping from an empty slushie cup.

Emily was carrying a full one destined for Maple, who hadn’t come with them to visit the coffee shop that Handshake based himself out of. Instead, she’d stayed at home with Sam, who was mostly just there to have a quiet place to do some school work and take care of a few projects.

Emily didn’t mind that her super-secret somewhat underground home base was becoming a hangout spot for her minions-slash-friends. It was enjoyable to have people around, mostly because they distracted her sisters and that meant more alone time for Emily.

She stepped into the house, slipping to the side so that her sisters could rush in ahead of her. Trinity spilled some of her slushie on the ground, but another of her bodies immediately fell on it, tongue sticking out with obvious intent before Emily tugged her up by the collar. “Get a mop,” she said.

Athena volunteered to help clean up the mess and Emily decided to leave her to it. She still had a lot of work and a lot of thinking to do.

The message she’d received just as she was leaving Handshake’s place was weighing heavy. Worse, it wasn’t even untrue. She had

betrayed Glamazon. Jezebelle had trusted Emily, and Emily had used that trust against her.

She knew long before she gave Handshake that information that he wouldn’t just use it to help Emily, but that he’d probably sell it and use it to push his own agenda. There was no way that that was what Jezebelle wanted when she gave Emily the USB.

The chance that the HRT caught on to the spilled information was probably not too high—after all the people that would buy that information from Handshake were probably not the kinds of people who’d spread it around themselves—but… well, there were a lot of probablies in play.

The data was no longer in Emily’s control and she had given it away entirely on purpose. There was no way to spin it that didn’t make Emily look bad.

The fact that she was more worried about how it would make her look bad than how bad it actually was… it was giving her heartburn and a bit of a headache.

Emily knew that she should feel guilty. And she did. A little.

She felt the guilt of someone who didn’t push their shopping cart all the way to the cart corral. It was a temporary, weak sort of guilt, and the fact that she felt so little was bothering her more than the feeling itself.

Was she always so… mean, or was this a new development?

She wasn’t sure. The truth was that she had spent most of her life without ever running into a situation where she had a clear and easy choice between doing what was wrong and right. Sure, she tried to be nice, but she also generally avoided interacting with people to begin with.

Had her powers been right to assign her Villain as a title?

Emily certainly hoped not. While she’d never gone out of her way to do good, she’d also never gone out of her way to be bad either. She’d never cheated… though that was mostly because studying usually took as much effort as cheating would and she was terrified of being caught and having to endure a lecture from a teacher.

She never stole anything though! Not that she’d ever really had the opportunity, or the desire to.

Emily chewed on her bottom lip and considered things while heading to the kitchen. She had Maple’s slushie in hand, and wanted to give it to the girl before it went warm and gross. She was about to go searching for Maple when Sam walked into the main room.

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Something about the look on Sam’s face immediately set Emily on edge. “Hey,” Emily said.

Sam sighed, looking as if someone had just removed a ton of weight off her shoulders. “I’m so happy to see you,” she said.

That didn’t sound good. “You are?” Emily asked.

Sam nodded. “You need to tell Maple to calm down,” she said. “Or get her to stop. I, uh, d not listening to me.”

“What’s Maple doing?” Emily asked. She couldn’t imagine Maple, of all her sisters, causing that much trouble. She was usually very quiet and reserved and even respectful. Unless… “What is she building?”

“Legs,” Sam said.

“Legs?”

“Yeah,” Sam said without clarifying anything.

“Where is she?” Emily asked. “And what do you mean by legs?”

“She’s down in the train tunnels,” Sam said. “She told me she wanted to start making something and since it was bigger than she could fit in her room, we set up in the tunnels. There are a few little maintenance rooms, you know? So I figured one of those could be set up as a workshop for her. They’re not too far, and if she makes something that’s dangerous, it won’t be right next to the living room.”

That seemed very practical to Emily. She could still remember the destructive power of the toaster Maple had made.

“I showed her the room. It’s got a little bench and some old supplies, but not much else, and then I came back up to grab some stuff for her. When I came back down, she was already working, so I got my laptop out and didn’t pay attention for a while.”

Emily suppressed a wince. Not paying attention to her sisters was a recipe for disaster.

Which reminded her… she wasn’t paying attention to them now. A glance revealed that Teddy was doing one of her post-sugar rush naps while hugging onto one of Trinity’s bodies on the couch. The other two halves of Trinity were trying to free herself.

Athena was splitting her attention between them and the TV.

“Girls, behave, we’ll be right back,” Emily said before following Sam out of the room. She gave it fifty-fifty odds they’d make a mess while she was gone, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

Sam led her down the stairs to the tunnel beneath the base. The cavernous passageway was as empty and cold as usual even though Sam and some of the minions had installed some battery-powered lights around the doorways that they used so that they could easily light up parts of the tunnel.

“She’s over here,” Sam said. There were several small maintenance rooms along the length of the tunnel. Emily supposed that they were there for workers to store tools and the like, but since the entire subway network had been abandoned before it was ever used, the rooms were mostly empty rat warrens.

Emily could hear Maple inside. Metal clanging against metal, the distinct sound of tape being unrolled, the usual sounds her little gadgeteer made when she was hard at work. The door was left ajar, but Emily knocked on it anyway.

It was one part politeness, and one part self-preservation. Emily didn’t need Maple to get startled and for one of her gadgets to go off by accident.

The banging didn’t stop, however, so Emily carefully pushed the door open.

Maple was at the bench, tottering on a footstool so that she could reach the top where she was assembling… something. It was disturbingly leg-shaped, which didn’t inspire much confidence.

“Maple?” Emily asked.

Maple paused, then turned to blink at Emily. She had some goggles on askew across her face and her hair was a tangled mess. “Oh, hi,” she said. Her eyes locked on the slushie in Emily’s hand.

“Hi,” Emily said. She approached, feeling a little more confident that whatever Maple was working on wouldn’t explode. Legs usually didn’t. “What are you working on?” she asked.

Maple turned back to her work. “Legs,” she said.

“Legs,” Emily repeated.

Maple nodded. “For Steffie.”

It all suddenly made sense. Steffie was the daughter of Emily’s sisters’ teacher. She was probably her sisters’ only friend who was their age, and so far she’d been a mostly good influence.

She was also wheelchair-bound, which limited her in a few ways.

“Legs,” Emily said again as she took in the start of what were clearly mechanical legs. “I see,” she said.

Maybe she didn’t need to worry about being bad all that much?

***

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