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Girls do dumb things to impress boys. I’m no different. But I swear it was safe. I’d done it on myself, on Jimmy Keeler, on a New England Patriots bobblehead, even on Mr. Falk himself when he toured R&D last Thanksgiving. Our suits keep it off you. They’re designed specifically for working with hypermercury. Maybe I missed a micro-tear. Maybe the gloves were degraded from the day’s testing. Maybe that 2.21% I was so proud of made hypermercury just that tiniest bit more corrosive, that tiniest bit hungrier. I poured my goop onto Tom Thatcher’s fingertips—just a little. I swear, only a little.
At first, it did its thing and did it fabulously.
My happy silver mud flowed over his knuckles, mapping his hand, conforming, coating, encasing. Becoming a gauntlet that almost nothing could pierce or dent or scratch or penetrate in any fashion. Just like it was supposed to—better than it was supposed to. I could see the wrinkles of his glove forming in crisp, flawless silver. It was beautiful.
And then he started screaming.
Through the faceplate of his suit I could see Tom Thatcher’s pretty face annihilate itself. Sudden thready veins snaked over his jaw—silver, white, blue, black—like frost cracking. Like dye falling through water. His eyes became hot diamonds, a million boiling crystal facets shredding his pupils. His stubble, the hair in his nose, his eyelashes, his eyebrows, all froze into steely icicles, then liquefied, sliding down over his cheeks, dripping, weeping off his chin. He said my name once.
Paige.
Then Tom fell down. When he got back up, everything in the world was different, and it would never go back.
He said I’m okay but he wasn’t. He said It didn’t hurt but it did. He said I feel fine but he lied.
He felt amazing.
• • •
Origin stories are like birthday parties: very exciting and colorful and noisy, but in the end, they’re all the same. Anticipation sizzles around for weeks before the Big Day, but when it comes, your shindig looks pretty much like the one little Peter had last month. There’s an order of operations: take off your coats, pin the tail on the donkey, infection, singing, cake, mutation, balloons, gifts, branding, maybe a magician or a clown, exhaustion, and a bag of toys to take home. You’re the same person today as yesterday. You just got a really big present and a shiny new hat to wear.
We stood outside the great glass doors of Falk Industries’ midtown campus hip-deep in the last dregs of night and stars.
I saw it first.
Tom Thatcher, standing in a puddle of rain. But it wasn’t rain. Too silvery, too thick, too opaque. It seeped from the soles of his feet, welled up, then bolted out ahead of him like a path through a fairy tale forest.
“Tom?” I asked. But he was already gone.
Tom vanished. That’s what the speed of light looks like when you’re standing still. He just tilted forward and disappeared, chasing the silver down 23rd Street, across the park, across the river, back to me, then up the side of the glassy Falk offices and over the top, leaping between skyscrapers like it was nothing, like he was hopping over Lego bricks he’d left on the floor of his room. I walked up to the N/R train subway entrance and waited for him to remember I existed. By the time he came silver-screaming down the stairwell, the sun had come up. Nothing can hide in the all-seeing light of dawn in Manhattan. Everything is just so totally clear.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Did you see? Did you see?”
I did.
Back at his place, Tom and me went at it like fucking was an Olympic sport and we were after the gold.
Nobody ever talks about the sex. Nobody but the Hell Hath Club. I’ll tell you something, it is unsettling as all hell. Tom turned into a hummingbird. So fast, touching every part of me at once, his fingertips crackling with the liquid lightning of hypermercury. With whatever hypermercury had become once it got inside him and unpacked all its secret belongings. Sometimes his eyes were diamonds. Sometimes they were human, brown and warm. Sometimes he was kissing me. Sometimes . . . sometimes it was. My work. My 2.21%. I could feel the difference on my lips. All the while, Glenn Falk III looked down from his poster, from his 1982 desk and his computer the size of a baby elephant.
Afterward, I lay there with one leg flung over his thigh, and we stated the obvious. Because it is obvious. I’ve seen a movie in my life. I’ve read a damn comic book. Why pretend there’s some mystery to Hardy-Boy out? Dead rising from the grave? Eating brains? Only die with a headshot? You’ve got zombies, son. And when you come in contact with experimental goo and suddenly start leaping up the sides of buildings and punching through steel?
“So,” Tom Thatcher said with a grin, “I’m clearly a superhero, right?”
“Clearly.”
“Do I have to fight crime?” He whispered sweet everythings in my ear. “I mean, that’s the classic career path. Computer science degree is to San Francisco start-up as superpower is to fighting crime. Never really wanted to be a cop, though.”
I ran my fingers down the line of his jaw. “So don’t be a cop. You don’t have to do anything. Except maybe see a doctor? We can’t be totally sure this is safe, it was nowhere near ready for human trials—”
Tom wasn’t listening. “But I . . . I have a responsibility, don’t I? To help people. If you’re strong, you gotta use that strength. And I . . . I’m good, aren’t I? I’m a good person. I could use it well. I could fix things. More than code. Debug the world, little bit by little bit. I can’t just go back to school like nothing’s different. You can’t just shove power under the bed and expect it to stay put. It wants to be expressed. I just . . . I just have to do it carefully.”
And that’s why I went back to the lab and deleted my notes, my progress, everything leading to that strange, wily 2.21% improvement and everything coming from it. Because Tom Thatcher was a good person. I took the solution sample home with me. I didn’t even break a sweat going through security. Turns out lying and stealing aren’t that hard. If you’ve got a solid reason to sin, it’s easy. It’s nothing. This was my reason: one Kid Mercury was enough for the world. One good person could be trusted. Mass-produced Kid Mercuries could not.
Tom kissed me so fiercely that first morning. He could hardly contain himself. He started giggling and fell back on the bed.
“Oh my god, Paige, I really want a costume. Is that stupid? Can you sew?”
The garbageman’s daughter could indeed sew.
