No Good Moves

Zugzwang hated waiting. He’d done enough of it for a lifetime and it gave him extra time to think. Extra time to think meant remembering things he didn’t want to remember. Such behavior wasn’t an option during missions like these. He had to stay alert, focused, and getting trapped in old memories would only hinder him. 

Gritting his teeth, he glanced at the clock. Only a few minutes to go, he thought. He closed his eyes momentarily and the memory came to him unbidden.

Sitting alone with his back to a great oak tree, Angelo watched the other children play as he reflected on his first day of elementary school. Nothing too terrible… Yet. Every teacher he’d ever had felt the need to announce to his class the weird(scary) things he could do and the kids in class never liked it much. 

He understood, in a way. Having your control taken from you was one of the worst feelings in the world, especially if you couldn’t control your own body anymore. He never used his power on anyone, not even when they called him names, not even when they hit him, they were always trying to provoke him into using it. But he wouldn’t. Not ever. He had promised his mother before she… well, he wasn’t going to take the bait. 

It was the same here as everywhere else, only a matter of time before the inevitable confrontation. He sighed and pulled his knees up to his chest. He could only wait and wonder if maybe, just maybe, things would be better at this school. 

He didn’t have to wait long. A group of boys approached him, talking and laughing loudly. Their ringleader stepped up to him and smirked. He was a boy with messy black hair and bright blue eyes that shone with a familiar combination of curiosity and mischief. This type was always the worst, at least the angry bullies were predictable. 

“Angelo, right?” Angelo nodded but stayed where he was, eyeing the group warily. “I’m Dylan Nelson and this is Issac, Nate, and Matt.” He pointed to the three boys with him in turn as he introduced them. Angelo tried to gauge their expressions and body language to predict what he might be in for. The one called Issac wore a smirk like Dylan’s, Nate just looked along for the ride but Matt gave him a hesitant smile which made him blink. When his target didn’t respond, Dylan continued. “So, teach’ said you had some cool trick you could do. Wanna show us?” He asked in a faux innocent tone. 

“Sorry, I don’t like using my power,” he said quietly, hunching his shoulders as though to make himself seem as small as possible. He didn’t look any of them in the eye, hoping they’d lose interest but it never worked that way for Angelo. Dylan smirked like he had been expecting that answer and cocked his head to the side, eyeing Angelo in a way that made him feel like he was an ant under a magnifying glass. (As the weeks went on, Angelo always felt like that when he was around Dylan).

“Awe, come on. What, does it make your head hurt?” Dylan questioned mockingly. It didn’t make his head hurt, but Angelo latched onto the idea. He nodded meekly. This, he realized later, was where he messed up. 

“Bet you can’t use it if your head hurts,” Dylan said, his smirk replaced by an expression of some strange parody of sympathy, “Am I right?” 

Then, Angelo knew he was in for it. From then on, those boys decided it was best to forcibly make his head hurt enough to where he couldn’t use his power even if he wanted to. Matt occasionally tried to step in but it rarely did much. Angelo never failed to thank him. 

No one questioned the cuts and bruises when he got back to the orphanage from school, no one seemed to care much in the first place.

Looking back, Angelo didn’t meet anyone who cared until he was 9, in a dingy back alley. When someone showed interest and even offered him a place in their home, he didn’t hesitate to take it. How could he? He had nothing to lose. 

It was a bit of a shock when he was led to the most expensive hotel in the area and taken to the penthouse which took up the entire top floor of the building. It was pristine, and Angelo wondered vaguely if they had room service. He was distracted, however, by the group he found lounging on the white leather couches and the armchairs big enough for two of him. The people who greeted him were all shapes, sizes, and colors though somehow no one seemed out of place.

They didn’t think that this new malnourished 9-year-old was out of place either, because once ‘The Master’ approved of him, they all treated him like one of their own and raised him as they would any other child. Well… how they would raise any other child. They trained him in combat and stealth, made him feel at home in a place where no one would bully him about his power ever again. He became a formidable opponent, taking orders only from The Master and commanding his team/family efficiently like a well-oiled machine. 

That’s how he ended up sitting in the shadows for a team of government agents to show up and ‘foil’ his plan. Idiots, all of them, he thought as he heard footsteps approaching. Neanderthals. So predictable. He rolled his eyes internally. Couldn’t they try to be a little quieter? They were supposed to be professionals.

He looked across the room to see Thorn, a petite redheaded woman with creamy skin, currently covered in black gear. He locked eyes with her crimson ones, and she nodded almost imperceptibly. That was the signal that the agents were almost around the corner. Good, he thought, I was starting to get bored.

He counted down the seconds the leaped gracefully onto the first agent, meeting the next before the lead even hit the floor. At least they had the sense not to scream, but they were startled by his surprise attack which gave him ample opportunity to knock another agent out cold with a devastating roundhouse kick. The remaining 4 agents looked at the three black heaps on the floor, then back at their opponent, who was grinning maniacally under the checkered mask he wore.

Angelo’s blood was singing in his veins, begging him to use his power but he repressed the urge. He only used that as a last resort. The Master had been helping him train it, but it still felt… wrong somehow. It was the one thing his mother hated most about him, and while his real family was helping him come to terms with his power and the fact that he was a product of a broken society, he still struggled with the fire burning in his core, getting hotter the longer he ignored it until it hurt. 

Two of the remaining agents rushed at him and he laughed softly, deftly dodging their attacks. He feinted to the left then ducked, allowing them to run into each other in a very comical fashion. 

“Enjoying yourself, Zugzwang?” His com crackled to life with the voice of another one of his teammates, Borg, they called him, as he was part cyborg. Nice guy. “Need you to stall for about 6 minutes and 11 seconds more, can you do that?” Angelo chuckled.

“Who do you think I am? A clumsy government dog?” Borg laughed in his ear and the agents still standing glared at him. Something odd struck him about the one furthest back, who hadn’t moved a muscle since Angelo had first attacked. He had chalked it up to shock but the figure was stock-still, breathing heavily as though winded, even though they were obviously in excellent shape. A panic attack maybe? What an inconvenient thing to happen to them in the middle of a confrontation. 

“What’s your damage?” he called to the quiet one. “This isn’t the place to be getting cold feet.”

“It’s you.” it breathed. That was a voice Angelo recognized. He snorted at the irony. 

“Fancy seeing you here, Dylan,” he said willing his voice to remain steady. It was taking a lot of effort to remain composed. Agent Nelson wasn’t having much luck with it either. 

“You- they said in the briefing but- I just couldn’t believe…” he sputtered.  Angelo narrowed his eyes. Without warning, he lunged at the nearest agent who had been watching their exchange with interest. With a well-placed jab, this one too fell to the floor unconscious. Dylan never took his eyes off Angelo.

“200…” Dylan whispered. “200 people go missing then turn up months later with no memories. That was you, wasn’t it?” Angelo folded his arms across his chest and decided it was better not to answer that question. “They’ve been stuck on that case forever… how-” he trailed off. Angelo cocked his head to the side the same way Dylan use to all those years ago.

That had been him. The Master needed information from each one of them and Angelo was only too happy to oblige. It was child’s play. All he had to do was touch someone and he could take control of their body. The blood running through their veins was his to command. No wonder people thought he’d use it for evil. They put him in a box with no way out. 

Angelo looked at Dylan as he would a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “Ahh, did you miss me?” he asked mockingly, a smirk spreading across his face. 

“You really are a criminal,” Dylan said, something unidentifiable in his tone that made Angelo uncomfortable. “I was right wasn’t I…” The words echoed in his mind and stirred something in Angelo… Another old memory. One that should be lost forever. His surroundings lost focus as a different scene filled his mind’s eye.

“Hey, Angelo!” Dylan called across the playground. He sounded all too happy about something as he approached flanked by his lackeys. He trolled up to where Angelo was sitting in the grass and stood in front of him with a look in his eye that formed a pit in Angelo’s stomach. He stood up, whether to run away or stand his ground, he wasn’t sure yet.

Turns out, he didn’t get that choice. As soon as he was on his feet, Nate grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him away from the playground and towards the dumpsters behind the school. He struggled to free himself from the other boy’s grip, but Nate was much bigger than he was, there was no use. He was thrown to the asphalt and landed hard enough to wind him. He looked up to see Dylan standing over him, vindictive pleasure seeping through his indifferent mask. 

“So we heard this crazy rumor about you yesterday,” he started. Angelo didn’t know what kind of rumor it was but he didn’t like it already. “My friend’s aunt used to live in the same neighborhood as you and she said that your dad died of a really sudden heart attack. Like, really sudden. Apparently, he was a healthy guy because she liked to watch him jog by her house every day.” The boys standing over him laughed but it did nothing to ease the pit in his stomach even if they weren’t laughing at him (yet). The laughter died down, but the cruelty in their eyes did not. “SO I thought to myself, why would a healthy guy like that just…” he looked meaningfully at Angelo, “drop dead.” Angelo paled. Dylan bent down so he could better look down on him. 

“You killed him, didn’t you.” It was a statement nat a question. Angelo felt like he was about to empty the contents of his stomach onto the asphalt next to him if he opened his mouth so he settled for frantically shaking his head side to side.

 He hadn’t killed him! It was an accident… Angelo remembered using his power to save his mother but not knowing how to turn it off, so when the man’s blood stopped in his veins, his heart stopped too. His mother had been so upset, but he had done it to help her! Not a week later, Angelo had found himself on the steps of an orphanage, his mother nowhere in sight.

“You did!” Dylan cried. “You’re a murderer. Are you gonna kill us too?” He wasn’t smiling now. His signature smirk was gone. He was glaring with contempt in his gaze and somehow that was so much worse. Angelo kept desperately shaking his head. He didn’t know what else to do. 

“A murderer like you wouldn’t be anything else,” Dylan said scathingly. The other boys joined in the taunting, and Angelo noticed that Matt was conspicuously missing. They called his a liar, a criminal, a murderer, told him he should be locked up, and when words weren’t doing enough damage, the confrontation had turned physical. 

“...nothing better.” An older Dylan’s words jolted him back to the present.

“Of course you were right,” Angelo jeered. “You were the one who told me I couldn’t be anything other than a criminal, right?” He spread his arms in what would have been a welcoming gesture. “Well, here we are, Nelson. Now you reap what you’ve sown.” With that, he charged, catching Dylan off guard. The agent barely blocked and threw his weight to the side to put Angelo off balance. Or at least he tried to. Angelo spun gracefully and landed in a semi-crouch. When Dylan regained his footing, he lashed out with a kick that Angelo dodged, retaliating with an elbow that only barley grazed his opponent’s side. The fight almost seemed choreographed with how they danced around each other’s attacks, neither landing a solid hit. At least one of the government dogs is competent, he thought sagely, ducking under a fist that would have surely broken his jaw.

“Alright, Zugzwang, you can stop playing with your food. We’ve got the data and Tophat says that your path is clear,” Borg’s voice floated into his ear. Angelo huffed impatiently at his old childhood bully when he tried yet another swipe at his mask. He turned under the pretense of preparing another attack while grabbing a nerve blade from his belt. It was a sleek black combat knife coated in a strong paralyzing poison. Angelo lunged under Dylan’s outstretched arm and nicked his side with the blade in his hand. Angelo jumped out of range.

“I can’t believe you’ve become this… this monster,” Dylan said while catching his breath, gesturing vaguely in his direction.

“I’ve become exactly what you made me,” Angelo replied, just as the poison took effect. Dylan crumpled to the ground and Angelo smirked.

“Checkmate.”