Friday Night Chat with a Supervillain.

Friday nights are supposed to be relaxing. Linda Brown would usually spend them watching a movie, or having a couple of drinks with her mates at the pub. Dangling from barbed wire was decidedly not the best way to start the weekend.

She managed to wriggle out of her jacket, somehow avoiding the countless shredding razorblades, and faced her next problem: a ten foot drop. This, at least, solved itself.

Linda was no acrobat, as the concrete was all too happy to remind her.

“Oof,” went the air that left her lungs.

Her bag had cushioned her fall. Slightly. Still, laying on the cold ground, gasping like a beached fish, she felt the tiniest of regrets.

Come on, girl, up and at em!

Such internal encouragement was spoken with the voice of her grandpa. He was a veteran, a shrewd businessman, and a staunch supporter of stiff upper lips. There were worse sources of inspiration.

So up she went: rising, wheezing, and adjusting her glasses.

“Damn,” she swore, seeing the crack in the lense, “damn it all to hell!”

As she snuck across the prison yard, narrowly avoiding searchlights and pratfalls, she cursed the Eye. Maybe it wasn’t charitable, but Linda couldn’t help it. The hero was only doing her job, after all.

Always Watching, to Keep You Safe!

What a terrible slogan. If she’d been in charge of marketing, then someone would’ve been fired. Sure, they wanted to emphasize the Eye’s super-sight, but, ‘Always Watching?’

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Linda had asked, when she’d first seen the posters, “She’s a super hero, not the shadow government!”

The UK’s premiere super-freak, to be exact. Inundated with looneys in various shades of purple and green, she had less than half the budget of the most pathetic of her US or USSR colleagues. It was a wonder that she could put any criminals away at all.

But come on, Linda thought, did you have to catch her this week?

She flattened herself against the wall of the main building, breathing heavily as she looked left, then right. No guards, good. She knelt down and flipped her satchel open, retrieving a map.

The Socket was not the largest super-prison in the world. It was, however, just expansive enough to be confusing. Her map was messy. The printer had been nearly empty, and she’d had to rip it out as a colleague approached. As she squinted at the faded lines, she lamented her boss’s cheapness.

The man refused to refill the printers until the ink turned invisible. Once, when she’d changed the cartridges before they were completely empty, she’d received the bollocking of the century. That was the closest she’d ever gotten to being fired. If he knew what she was doing right now, he’d load her into a cannon.

Not that it mattered. Everything going according to plan, that job would be meaningless. The ruined scraps of her jacket, still hanging on the barbed wire, caught her eye.

Everything past this point.

Linda was not renowned for being sneaky. If you asked her friends, they might describe her as; clumsy, awkward, a bit dopey. Honestly, she should get better friends. Yet, despite her deficient stealth, she managed to creep her way to Cell Block A. She secreted herself in a little nook besides some large dustbins, and peeked at her goal.

The Socket may not have had the biggest budget, but what money they did have, they’d spent on Cell Block A. ‘A’ for ‘A-list’. The biggest, baddest, most dangerous villains in the UK were cooped up in there, and the security didn’t disappoint.

Whereas most of the gaol was dark and quiet, ‘A’ was bright and bristling, guards patrolling and lights sweeping in uninterrupted waves. If the Socket was a fortress, then Block A was its keep. Linda baulked at the idea of being caught here. Briefly, she considered retreating, going home and forgetting all about this.

No, a more courageous part of her declared, I’m getting that god-damned interview.

It did seem damned, now that she thought of it. Maybe even by God.

Supervillains were not the most talkative types. Sure, they might monologue about their evil plans to heroes, but the rest of us? Fat chance. So when the most notorious supervillain in England agreed to an interview? Any journalist would jump at the oppurtunity. Some might be a bit wary of such a person’s reputation, but Linda Brown, for all her mundanity, was ambitious. That, and a bit foolhardy.

The two together pushed her out of her nook and sent her furtively skulking along the east wall. She had a plan. It was a bad plan, but she didn’t know that. There was a tiny gap in the patrols, but no gaps in the lights. Thankfully, there was a solution for that. She checked her watch. Ten o’clock.

He’s late, she noted with a grunt.

She waited, her body loaded like a spring. A minute after they were supposed to, the spotlights shut off. She was gone in an instant, sprinting for the cell block’s main door. She had about twenty seconds, more than enough to cover the thirty metres.

Of course, she didn’t make it. Not because she wasn’t fast enough, nor because anyone saw her. No, rather, she didn’t make it because the cell block exploded.

The noise was so loud that it rattled Linda’s bones, and the shockwave stunned her. The guards were less fortunate. She stumbled forwards, dazed, through rubble and bodies.

Bodies.

The only dead person she’d ever seen was her grandfather, lying peacefully in a funeral home. Now she was surrounded by fresh corpses.

Oh God.

She nearly threw up.

Movement caught her eye, something shifting in the dark of the cell block.

“Convenient,” rumbled a deep voice. “What idiot turned off the power?”

As if in answer, the lights came back on, framing Linda like she was on stage. She froze, a kid caught with candy contraband. Three terrible forms were outlined by the restored luminescence;

The first was very tall, and very long, stretched like the victim of some medieval torture.

The Rack.

The second undulated, a mass of sharp tentacles and soft, fleshy ears. It was wearing a waistcoat and a top hat.

Mr. Lovecraft.

The third was lean and spiky, decked in prison greys. She was the most normal looking of the three, her mohawk being the most distinctive thing about her. Well, asides from her glowing eyes and hands.

Kaboom.

She realised that she’d sorely miscalculated how long a break out would take.

“I say, good fellows!” slobbered Lovecraft, “who’s that I espy?”

Linda couldn’t move, still frozen.

“S’a woman,” Kaboom said, picking her way over the rubble, “not a guard, I remember their faces.”

The trio approached, all looming over her, particularly The Rack.

“Hmm,” the latter rasped. “What’s it doing here, what?”

She gulped, her mouth dry.

“Hey!” Kaboom shoved her, “he asked you a question!”

Linda, action reporter, stood, struck dumb, like an idiot.

“It would seem the poor thing’s quite awestruck!” Lovecraft slurped, examining her with a massive, monocled eye. “Quite the show you put on, dear woman!”

This last comment was directed at Kaboom. The mohawked villain curled a lip, looking around at the destruction.

“Not my best work,” she commented, “but I weren’t sure how long the power’d be out.”

“Long enough, evidently!” Lovecraft bubbled.

Linda hadn’t taken her eyes off of The Rack. He was staring down at her, stroking his chin. This close, she could see the straw-like texture of his skin. She was remembering the pictures she’d seen of his victims, the ones her boss had sprayed all over the front page.

“What’s it doing here, what?” he repeated.

“I just-” Linda squeaked.

“Leave her alone.”

This was a new voice, one that sent shivers down her spine. It was coldly warm, sentimentally detached, joyously empty. A voice like that was a weapon, and its threat caused the villains to part.

“Yo, boss.” Kaboom greeted, a tremor in her tone, “you got out.”

This was addressed to a darkness spreading from the shattered wall.

“Linda,” the darkness said, “Linda Brown, with the Daily Mail.”

Something stepped out of the dark, a foot pulling itself from ink. A second foot joined, then legs, then thighs, then stomach and chest and neck. A head emerged last, beautiful and awful, sharp lines tracing soft shapes in the night air. She was naked, and Linda blushed.

“Nightma’am,” she acknowledged, diverting her gaze.

“You know her, m’lady?” Lovecraft asked.

“Yes,” Nightma’am said, stepping forwards, the shadows clinging to her like needy children.

“Hey, uh, boss... could ya put some clothes on?”

Linda concurred with Kaboom, but thought better of saying anything. The dark flowed around the woman, covering her nudity.

“Let’s get out of here,” Nightma’am suggested. “Before the Eye gets here.”

“I shall need a snack before leaving!” Lovecraft announced, “What about this one?”

Linda very nearly wet herself hearing that.

“No,” Nightma’am commanded, to Linda’s relief, “eat one of these-” she kicked a dead guard’s boot “-instead.”

Lovecraft reviewed the corpses with what could have been distaste.

“But, M’lady…”

He recoiled, then writhed, making a horrible squealing sound. The other villains froze. Nightma’am hadn’t moved.

“Please, M’lady!” the monster begged, “please!”

He stopped, settling down.

“I’m sorry,” he slobbered, squelching over to a cadaver, “I’m sorry.”

“Eat up, then get us out of here.”

Nightma’am approached, the villains parting like the sea.

“I believe I promised you an interview.” She said.

***

“My name’s Sarah Silvertree, I’m thirty-two years old, and I’m from Guildford, Surrey.”

Lovecraft had teleported them all to a safe house- an old abandoned hangar. Nightma’am and Linda had then settled in to a room on the side of the main structure.

Linda scribbled down what Nightma’am had just said.

What am I doing? She asked herself.

The woman sat opposite her was one of the most dangerous people in the world, and she’d just broken her out of gaol. But instead of fear, or guilt, or even nerves really, a thrum of excitement lit up her belly. Finally, finally, she’d gotten her break.

“Guildford?” she asked.

The shadowy woman nodded, a slight smile playing on pitch-black lips.

“Yes, you know it?”

“I’ve heard the name, never been there myself.”

“You’re not missing much.”

Linda checked her notes. She’d had a whole suite of questions to ask, but now that it came time to ask them, she was drawing a blank. Thankfully, she had them written on a page of her notebook.

“Um… one second,” she said, flipping through it.

“Take your time,” Nightma’am allowed, looking amused.

After much fumbling, she found them.

“Right! Right-” she looked from the questions, to the woman sat opposite her, back to the questions. “So… I think the public wants to know, Ms. Silvertree-”

“Call me Sarah,” the villain requested.

Linda felt a blush creep back into her cheeks.

“Right, Sarah-”

“Shouldn’t you have some kind of voice recorder?”

That flushed her redder than a tomato. Yes, she should. She felt around in her bag, and then pulled a mass of shattered plastic out of it.

“Oh…”

She’d landed on it when she’d fallen from the wall.

Nightma’am burst into laughter.

“Ah, you’re cute!” she said, wiping away a spectral tear. “I knew you were the right person for this!”

“W-what do you mean?” Linda stammered.

Nightma’am leaned in, resting her chin on her palm.

“To tell my story,” she said, a little smile playing dancing through the corners of her mouth. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

She couldn’t say a word. Her heart was beating very hard, and she was very aware how close the shadowy villain was to her.

“To tell my story, and make your mark?”

She nodded, her mouth dry.

“Ambition,” Nightma’am whispered, “is very attractive.”

She pulled back, leaving Linda heaving for air.

“Go on then,” she cajoled, “ask your questions!”

Linda swallowed.

“Yes…” she looked down, composed herself, and began the interview. As she went, she composed the article in her head.

What makes a Villain? Tragedy? Ambition? Or something else, something less concrete? There is much to be said about Sarah Silvertree, also known as Nightma’am, perhaps our fair isle’s most notorious supervillain. First rising to prominence after defeating the Six-Star Aces, Nightma’am terrorised the UK for nearly three years, causing major disruption to the workings of government and public life.

After her eventual defeat by the Eye; our premiere Superhero; Silvertree was imprisoned in the maximum security wing of the Socket, England’s recently-constructed Super-Prison…

...until I broke her out.

Maybe that part was best left unwritten.

“You’ve been convicted of three hundred and forty-seven counts of murder, fifty-four counts of fraud, five hundred and eighty-one counts of…”

Linda went quiet as she continued to read the printed list of crimes. Nightma’am watched her, bemused.

“Go on,” she encouraged, “there’s a lot more there!”

She put the list down, cleared her throat, and mustered the courage to look the villain in the eye.

“Why?”

The smile, sharp as a razor, faltered.

“Why?” she said. “Why… I’ll tell you why.”

The charm had melted, leaving something bitter and malign.

“Do you know how I got my powers?” she spat.

Linda shook her head, enthralled.

“I was crushed by a bunch of old books.”

That wasn’t the answer she’d expected.

“Books?”

Sarah nodded, the shadows trailing her head undulating.

“Spell-books. I was in a bookshop, looking for something to read, and a shelf fell on me.”

She was leaning in, a hard sneer on her lips, and Linda had trouble keeping up with her.

“There was another woman there, I don’t know who, another customer. She died, but they thought she was me.”

She shook her head, snorting disdainfully.

“Can you believe it?” Her dark eyes flicked up to meet Linda’s.

“No one identified the body?”

“Oh, they did.” She said, “My own parents thought she was me.”

Linda felt a twinge of sympathy.

“That’s awful.”

“That’s not the end of it!” She was into it now, gesticulating as she continued. “My parents kicked me out when I was seventeen, and never bothered to call me after that. So when I ‘died’, they didn’t even recognise me.” She shrugged, “fine, I guess. I had friends, I didn’t need them. Or so I thought-” she snorted with derision “-the truth is, no one cared. Not my parents, not my so-called friends. My obituary was one line long, some rubbish about-” air quotes “-she was a good person, yaddah yaddah.”

This was great- Linda couldn’t wait to publish it.

People are going to eat this up!

England’s biggest supervillain was a villain because she was a loser.

Nightma’am stopped dead in her rant. She lay down her arms, a hurt look playing across her features.

“That’s not nice,” she said.

Linda stopped writing.

“You can read thoughts?” she asked.

Sarah nodded. Ice water dripped down Linda’s neck.

“Then why am I still alive?” she whispered.

Nightma’am leaned back, the room dimming behind her.

“Is that what you think of me?” she demanded, “I don’t kill people for insulting me!”

Linda gathered her courage.

“But you do kill them,” she stated, “all because no-one cared about you.”

The villain shook her head.

“That’s not it,” she protested.

“That’s what you just said!” Linda retorted.

“Let me finish,” she requested, “please?”

“OK, go ahead.”

Nightma’am looked away, thinking.

“People are awful,” she began, “the people who run the world most of all. Billionaires, politicians-” she waved her hand “-all of them. I heard what they were thinking, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the point of living was. I’d made little impact with my life, and less with my death.” She leaned in, gaze intense. “So I decided to do something. I have a lot of power now, so I’m going to make the world better.”

“Why not be a hero, then?”

Sarah chuckled at that.

“Heroes uphold the status quo, Linda. They don’t try to change things. If they did, they’d be labelled as villains.”

“They’re all fakes, then?”

“No,” Sarah said, slowly, “just ineffectual.”

“And them?” Linda nodded in the direction of the others, “The serial killer, the monster, the pyromaniac? Your minions? Are they trying to make the world a better place?”

Nightma’am shrugged.

“Would you rather they ran about off leash?”

Linda didn’t have a reply to that.

“But… you kill innocent people.” She said, “how do you justify that?”

“I don’t.” Sarah replied, deadly serious. “But we don’t kill nearly as many as they say.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she began, holding Linda’s gaze, “that a lot of the people we supposedly killed were actually killed by the government.”

She stared at the villain. Nightma'am didn’t seem to be joking.

Before Linda could press the matter, they were interrupted. Kaboom burst through the door burning eyes wild.

“Heads up, we’ve got incoming!”

“The Eye?”

The fiery villain nodded.

“Sorry, Linda,” Sarah shrugged, “we’ve got to go.”

She stood, ignoring Linda’s protestations.

“I hope you got what you needed!”

Then they were gone.

Linda sat alone in the dark, mulling over what had been said. She did have what she needed for her article. It wouldn’t win her a Pulitzer or anything, but it’d probably get her out of her dead-end job. Still, she wasn’t satisfied. The villain’s words had resonated, somewhere deep inside.

Linda Brown was quite ordinary. She lived an ordinary life, every day of her life. Until one day she didn’t. The day she accidentally broke four supervillains out of gaol, all for an interview with just one. On that day, she found out that she wanted more.

She noticed that Sarah had left something on the table. It was a note: a phone number.

Give me a call. ♥

-Sarah Silvertree, Nightma’am.

Maybe she would.

After all, she mused, the interview’s not over.