Dreadnought Read online

  Calamity looks at me, her brow knitted in confusion. “You uh…you on the track team or something?”

  I realize I’m not winded. “I’m a wide receiver,” I say, which is true, but also not really an explanation for why I could mistake a dead sprint for a light jog.

  “Whatever you say, Danny. I think we’d best part ways here. I’ve got some things to run down. Might be seeing you soon.” Calamity turns, and from a standing leap catches the lowest rung of a fire escape ladder.

  “Hey, wait!” I blurt.

  “What?” she asks as she slithers up onto the escape’s lowest landing.

  My cheeks get warm. “Do you have a mirror with you?”

  She turns back to me and spreads her jacket wide so I can see the flash grenades hanging from a harness she wears around her chest. “Do I look like I carry a compact around with me?”

  “Oh.”

  There’s a smile in her eyes over the bandanna. “Put your shoes on, kid. You’ll cut your feet.” Calamity climbs the fire escape like a squirrel, and slips over the roof’s edge and out of sight.

  Now I’m alone again, with this new body.

  I sit down on a stack of abandoned milk crates and begin to shake. I’m dizzy. Is this what shock feels like? I stare at my hands, and my legs. It’s hard to tell but I think my shoulders are narrower. My pants are pinching me pretty hard around my hips. I feel my face and the scratchy peach fuzz is all gone. David is going to freak when he sees this. I laugh, and the sound is beautiful. I’m a girl. A real girl, at last.

  The sirens are everywhere now. A fire engine roars past the alley’s mouth. I should be going. I slip my feet into my shoes—they’re so huge!—and head for the nearest train station.

  As I’m climbing the stairs to the elevated train stop a green line train pulls out from station. Someone whistles from atop the train as it passes me. I look up, and Calamity tips her hat to me. She turns into the wind, her coat streaming behind her as the train makes speed.

  • • •

  The train rocks gently as we shoot along a straightaway. The windows are fogged in the early evening gloom, and I sit at the very front of the car so I can keep my back to everyone else. I can’t stop smiling, even when somebody looks up from their phone and announces to everyone in the carriage that Dreadnought is dead. Some people are crying softly, others talking in hushed voices. This train has the air of a funeral, but I can barely keep from giggling. A quiet part of me in the back of my head says I should be ashamed. Dreadnought is dead. People are in mourning. But I can’t be sad. As sick as it is, I’m excited. He gave me the greatest gift imaginable, even though I don’t deserve it. He fixed me. Made me a girl. I don’t understand how. As far as I know, none of the men who wore the mantle of Dreadnought ever had powers like that.

  Now that I’ve had time to think about it, a possible explanation has occurred to me. One I almost don’t dare hope to be true. It almost feels presumptuous to think about. My mind skitters around it, looks in from the edges.

  Here’s what I know, courtesy of way too many late nights fangirling about superheroes on Wikipedia: In February of 1944, an American pilot whose name has been deliberately lost to history encountered an unidentifiable glowing light in the midst of a fierce battle over Germany. Thinking it was a new German weapon, he attempted to follow it, but it vanished into a cloud. He went in after it, and his plane simply…disappeared. A week later he returned to Allied Command in England and changed the course of history.

  Forty years before that strange encounter over Germany, the British had built a warship that revolutionized naval warfare. HMS Dreadnought was faster, stronger, and tougher than anything else afloat. Overnight, it made every other battleship in the world obsolete. That’s what the first man to wear the mantle did to metahumans. Nobody had ever flown as fast or as high as he could. Nobody had ever been able to throw a punch like he could. Nobody was able to soak up the kind of punishment he could. So they called him Dreadnought and he was fearless.

  In two months of fighting, he’d killed or captured half of Nazi Germany’s metahuman operatives, Hitler’s famous Übermenschen. Infamous villains like Kristallnacht and Doctor von Sieg didn’t even slow him down. The survivors went underground and stayed there almost the rest of the war, right up until the big showdown in Leipzig in April of ’45.

  After the war was over, when the alliance between the Western powers and the Soviets began to break down, everyone in Washington assumed the twin superiorities of American nuclear power and American supermen would be enough to force the Soviets to capitulate to any demand the Allies wished to make. That lovely notion, along with a dozen city blocks of downtown Berlin, was demolished during Red Steel’s debut bout against Dreadnought.

  And then the arms race was on.

  Dreadnought wasn’t just unprecedented, he was the harbinger of a new wave of metahumans more potent than anything that had come before. For a short while it seemed like a major new player took the stage every month or so. All efforts to find the source of this new glut of powerful metahumans failed. Atomic radiation, ancient curses, exotic chemistry, eldritch magic—the variety of origin stories was as broad as the variety of people they happened to. Despite an aggressive search, no common cause was ever identified.

  In the decade after the war, we started getting our first supercriminals. In ’61, Mistress Malice made her bid for world domination, and suddenly we had supervillains as well. The first Dreadnought’s death at her hands stunned the world, and flags flew at half-mast all over the planet. For an eerie six months it looked like she would win, her floating citadel appearing without warning over major cities to collect tribute and declarations of surrender before disappearing just as quickly. Again and again, teams of heroes broke themselves upon the teeth of her fortress’ defenses.

  The second Dreadnought’s appearance sent electric waves of hope across the globe, and that famous picture of him, a lone, tiny figure confronting her invincible fortress over the White House became the image of the twentieth century. For three days and three nights they fought a running battle across the width of North America. In the last great gasp of radio journalism, the whole world stayed glued to their sets to listen to the live reports as Dreadnought and Mistress Malice savaged each other. Cities burned and forests died. Mountains shattered and rivers boiled. Finally, at the edge of endurance, at the limit of hope, Mistress Malice fell. With the help of Red Steel, the new Dreadnought managed to sink her fortress into the Pacific and undo her ambitions. She was vaporized when the reactor blew.

  The second Dreadnought’s controversial decision to team up with Red Steel to take down Mistress Malice signaled the beginning of a troubled relationship with the US government, for Dreadnought personally and for the superhero community in general. The turmoil of the civil rights movement and Vietnam split the happy relationship most American capes had enjoyed with their government, and over the course of the ’70s, the first cape teams formed up as independent entities.

  After the second Dreadnought was killed in action during the Kaiju Crisis of ’85, his successor saw the end of the Cold War and had his hands full dealing with the dozens of Soviet Bloc heroes who were suddenly on the market as high-end mercenaries. The Miami Horror and Black Christmas proved that Earth still needed heroes, but it seemed that for the first time in almost sixty years the world was more or less a safe place. Men like Dreadnought would keep it that way.

  Until today, when he gave me something as he lay dying. Something I don’t understand, that changed my body and made me perfect. Because of what he did, whatever it was, I’ll be able to live the way I was meant to. As a girl. Finally. I’m grateful; hell, I’m practically vibrating with excitement. It seems almost greedy to hope for more.

  But who wouldn’t want to be able to fly?

  I have to do something to pay him back, to honor his memory. Maybe what he gave me will let me do that. Maybe I’m going to be the next—

  My stop comes up, and with a jolt
I realize I haven’t thought at all about what I’m going to tell Dad.

  Chapter Three

  It’s full dark now, and I’m still hidden here behind the tree near our driveway. How the hell do you explain something like this? Well you see, Father, I was out buying nail polish to wear in secret because I’ve been half the colors of the rainbow for years now, when the greatest hero of the age fell out of the sky, gave me his power, and died. Somehow this turned me into a girl. Anyhow, I’m off to buy some bras and panties, ta-ta! Come, Mother, and show me the wonders of the tampon aisle!

  But maybe that’s getting ahead of myself. Here’s the real problem: are they even going to recognize me?

  My phone buzzes. A text from Mom: Danny, we talked about this. Where are you? Come home immediately. Your father is upset.

  I send a text to my best friend, David: I screwed up and missed my curfew. My parents are pissed.

  His reply comes almost instantly: Shit. Are you still out?

  Yeah.

  Okay, it’ll be all right, but you need to go home. It’ll get worse the longer you’re out.

  I’m scared, I type.

  It’ll be okay. Text me later if you need to.

  He’s right, of course. David’s always there for me. But this time I feel like it’ll be different. What with the girl thing and all. How can I explain that in a text message? I bite my lip, bounce on my toes. Eventually I give up trying to type out a coherent reply and walk slowly up to our front door. My keys shake in my hand as I turn the lock. I slip the door closed behind me and try to set my feet down quietly. It’s an old house, with wooden floors and a fireplace that doesn’t work anymore. If I can just make it to the steep, narrow staircase, maybe I can slip sneak past them and get up to my room before they notice I’m back. And then…and then.

  Master of the cunning plan, am I.

  Mistress. I mean mistress of the cunning plan. I start giggling halfway through the living room, and that does it. Cover blown.

  Mom comes around the corner. Mom’s a smallish woman with deep worry lines. She’s wiping her hands on her apron, and there’s that tightness around her eyes I’ve learned to take as a warning. “Danny, where have—who are you?”

  “Um…hi.”

  Mom’s face goes to stone. “I’m sorry, but you need to leave; Danny shouldn’t have—”

  “Mom, wait!” She looks like someone slapped her. I keep going before she can stop me. “I’m Danny.”

  Mom opens her mouth, blinks, closes her mouth. It was hard to get a clear look at my reflections in the windows I passed on the way home, but I saw enough to know I still resemble my old self. Same short blond hair, same basic face, but softened by the puberty I should have had, not the one I got. “What?”

  “Something happened. I, uh—”

  “Roger. Roger, get in here,” says Mom, not looking away from me. She’s twisting her apron in her hands. Her fingers have gone white.

  Well. This is going swimmingly.

  My father enters. He’s got a receding hairline and a voice made for shouting. Which is real convenient, because he shouts. A lot. “Who the hell are you?” he snaps. “Get out.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Wh—I don’t have a daughter.”

  “Um, you do now. I’m Danny.” My posture folds inward. My arms cross across my stomach, and I can’t look him in the eye. I hate how I always wilt like this, but, well, it’s easier this way. Sometimes even this isn’t enough. Sometimes it pisses him off that I’m a coward. But it’s not like there’s an alternative.

  “Danny put you up to this? You tell him he’s grounded until—”

  “I am Danny, Dad.” I put as much defiance as I dare in my tone, which I admit isn’t much. I’m not looking him in the eye, because I never do that when he’s angry. It’s not safe. “Something happened today. Didn’t you hear the news?”

  “I don’t know what kind of joke you think you’re playing, young lady,” Dad says, his voice rising. “But you’re trespassing and you need to leave! Now!”

  “Dad, I live here. I’m Danny.” My voice is faltering. I’m collapsing in on myself. He’ll start yelling now, and then there will be nothing to do but wait him out. Of course it’s going this way. I can’t imagine why I thought it would go any other way.

  “No! I’ve had enough of this bullshit!” His voice seems to shake the room. “You get out, and you tell my delinquent son—”

  “Roger,” says Mom. Her voice is shaking a little, but she steps to my side, and I love her more now than I ever have before. “This is Danny. Look at…well, look.”

  My father’s eyes get wide. His face goes the color of spoiled milk. “What did you do?” he asks, quietly enough to scare me.

  “I didn’t do anything! It just happened. Dreadnought was fighting someone, and there was this flash of light, and then…I was this.” My cheeks are burning. It’s not really a lie, right? I brace up and get ready for it.

  For once, Mount Screamer doesn’t detonate. “Danny? Oh hell, what happened to you?”

  “I don’t know. There was a superhero fight. And I was nearby, and then…this.”

  “Don’t you worry.” He draws himself up, as tall and proud as he can, like he’s about to be magnanimous. “We’re going to make this right. I love you. You’re my son.”

  I take a half step back. “Well…not anymore.”

  “We’ll go to doctors. We’ll get this looked at,” he says. Dad doesn’t sound like he’s all here anymore. He’s not really looking at me. He’s looking past me, toward some kind of pathetic optimism where he doesn’t have to deal with who I really am. “Hell, we’ll talk to the Legion if we need to. If it was done, it can be undone.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works, Dad. I’m a girl now. Maybe”—I lick my lips—“maybe we should just accept that.”

  He seems to come back to the here and now with a jolt. He sets his jaw. “Don’t say that. We’re going to get through this, okay? I will find a way to fix this. You have my word.”

  “Uh, sure. Thanks.”

  And then he sweeps me into one of those rough, manly hugs he’s so big on. A healthy masculinity, he calls it, over and over again. I am suddenly filled with contempt. It takes an effort of will not to peel him off me, and I shiver with disgust. I don’t care what he says. I don’t care what he wants. I don’t care what he thinks. I am a girl. I am free.

  And I am never.

  EVER.

  Going back.

  • • •

  My door locks behind me with a comforting click, and I let out my breath. That was frustrating, and scary as hell, but it’s over. Dad spent twenty minutes thinking out loud—brainstorming, he said—about all the ways he’s going to try and take this away from me. I’m sorry, I mean all the ways he wants to help me. Jackass. There’ll be a lot of doctors and a lot of tests, and so on. Good luck, buddy. You’re going to need it.

  I slide the butter knife out of my sweatshirt sleeve and sit down on my narrow bed. I slipped it up here to test a theory. With just a few fingers at either end, I try to bend the metal. It resists me, and for a moment disappointment wells up in my chest. But then I get a sense of something, like if I pushed in just this way, then—

  With a quiet whine of tortured metal the knife bends in half, easy as folding a piece of paper.

  Holy shit.

  I feel cold and shaky. The knife slips out of my fingers. I’d hoped. I’d really sincerely hoped, but I didn’t—

  Holy shit.

  Go ahead, Dad. Hit me like you mean it. What do you think you can do? Force me to take testosterone shots? I pick the knife back up, and tie it in a knot. Nobody is going to force me to do anything ever again.

  The giggles come back. I hug myself. I struggle not to laugh too loudly. I can’t jump because of the low slanted roof of my top-floor room, so I hop for joy—

  —and forget how to come down. Now I do laugh out loud, and screw it if he hears me. I hang up here in the air, flailing,
trying to get down. I feel like I’m stuck here, like there’s this net behind the world that I’ve become tangled in. I could almost grab onto it, if I only knew how. I close my eyes and feel around with my arms. I flop over in midair and end up floating upside down.

  Someone’s coming.

  “Danny,” Mom says from the other side of the door. “Are you okay?”

  “Uh. Fine.” My hair is brushing the floorboards, and I’ve got a slight spin that is slowly, slowly rotating me.

  “Danny, I want you to know that you can talk to me. About anything. Okay?”

  Which is not even close to true, but she can’t know how wrong she is. “Okay, Mom. I…I just want some time alone, okay?”

  “Okay. I love you, sweetie.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Now. To figure out how to get down.

  • • •

  I wake up, and immediately look down to make sure my body is still the proper shape.

  “Oh, thank God.”

  I slip a T-shirt over my head, and fight on a pair of jeans. My hips are wide enough to give my old pants problems. The legs are too long and I roll them a few inches up.

  As I’m getting dressed, my eyes fall on the poster of Valkyrja that’s hanging on my wall. She’s another member of the Legion Pacifica, the regional superhero team. Maybe I’ll get to meet her. At the thought of it, a deep flush rises in my cheeks. Maybe that would be a bad idea. I’d probably fangirl all over her. She wouldn’t be impressed.

  When I come downstairs, Dad looks at me with disappointment, like he was hoping it was all a dream. I fix myself breakfast and sit down.

  “Mom. Can you take me shopping today?” I ask over my bowl of cereal.

  Mom glances at Dad. “Um, maybe.”

  “What do you need to go shopping for?” asks Dad. Fear tickles the underside of my heart.