October 24, 2022

Maddy Oakes concentrated, gritting her teeth as she strained to flex her telekinetic powers, staring at the transport truck grill inches from her face. She breathed out deeply.

The truck began to move, slowly, from where it had jackknifed and overturned into the barriers on the highway overpass. Traffic continued to speed by on the 401 below as the sheep-bear telekinetically pushed and pulled at various parts of the vehicle’s transmission and chassis, carefully rotating the shapes in their mind to accomplish the same movements upon the physical objects. They eventually managed to right it, but great heaving creaks and groans from the metal made clear that there would be much to repair.

However, the future roadworthiness of the vehicle wasn’t Maddy’s problem; she was concerned only with removing the road hazard, as she’d been dispatched to do earlier that morning, being the nearest available Ontario’s Heroes operative with suitable capabilities for road accident cleanup. This was the kind of Hero work she could enjoy on some level: acting in the public good, achieving results quicker and more effectively than those without her gifts. Had her telekinesis not been conveniently at the disposal of the Ontario Provincial Police’s highway patrol unit, it could have taken several more hours for tow trucks and cranes to clear the accident.

They sighed sadly at the part of that equation that involved working alongside police. The cops who’d radioed in a request for OH assistance leaned lazily against the side of their black-and-white Ford Explorer, sipping their coffees and kibitzing as they watched the sheep-bear work. Maddy’s eyes narrowed in irritation.

She also wasn’t thrilled to be helping out this particular truck driver, a sour-faced newt who was inexplicably wearing a Confederate flag-emblazoned baseball cap, despite the owner-operator information on his cab doors indicating he was based in Lévis, Quebec. When she’d pulled up on her motorcycle and introduced herself moments before, the man had mumbled something in French that Maddy hadn’t quite caught; from his bitter tone and refusal to look her in the eye, however, she was reasonably certain it had been transphobic. The newt stood apart from the OPP officers, thumbing at a smartphone and periodically wincing as his truck was moved haltingly off the roadway.

Finally, it was done; although substantially the worse for wear, the tractor-trailer was at least no longer blocking the overpass, and could be easily towed away. Anxious to depart, Maddy exchanged perfunctory acknowledgments with the police and gave a sarcastically cheery salute to the trucker; the newt scowled and looked at the ground. Straddling their Yamaha V-Max, the sheep-bear donned their sleek maroon motorcycle helmet and sped off to their destination on the Mississauga waterfront.

Maddy waved at the guards as she swiped her access badge to the reader, and proceeded through the security gate of OH Lakeview. She was just about to proceed down the wide corridor when one of them popped out of the security post’s door, and called after her. “Miss Oakes?”

They turned, hesitantly. “Yes…?”

The guard was a lean bloodhound, and he held a notebook in one hand, reading it off to the sheep-bear before him apologetically. “You have a priority order from Director Hagen. You’re to, quote, ‘Get your fucking head in the game,’ unquote, and meet with him immediately.” He rubbed at the back of his neck with the other hand, a hangdog look on his face. “Sorry. Just the messenger here.”

Maddy winced. “Thank you, Officer. Understood, please let the Director know I’ll be with him shortly,” they forced out in a clipped, professional tone. The bloodhound gave a polite nod, and dipped back into the doorway to his side.

She’d been dreading returning to duty. The revelations of the previous week had thrown the young sheep-bear for a loop; after all, it wasn’t every day that Maddy found out that her nascent career as the licensed, provincially-sanctioned professional superhero Heartforce had been based on a lie.

It turned out their father, Heartwood, Hero of the Prairie League, had been anything but heroic. Maddy had spent the better part of the previous Thursday camped out in the surreptitious communications room of Helical BioSpectra, Inc., the downtown Toronto biotech firm; the Korps front company’s chief counsel had taken pity on the distraught young Hero, and shown them everything they’d never known about Heartwood.

Indeed, Roger Oakes had been a hateful, festering sore of a man, openly bloodthirsty about the prospect of inflicting pain on the petty criminals, leftists, foreigners and queers he despised. It was only thanks to a compliant media that the Provincial Heroes’ League and their regional affiliates had been able to maintain Heartwood’s public image as a charmingly decent straight-shooter. Worse, after watching hours of memory-holed news footage of the man screaming slurs and doing grievous bodily harm to innocent protestors and bystanders, Maddy had spoken with her mother about what she’d learned that day; Mom then revealed that Dad had been equally violent and abusive to her in private.

It was all, Maddy considered, A Lot To Deal With.

They’d begged off sick for the weekend — they were sick, in a way, sick of being lied to and manipulated by cruel old men who saw them as nothing more than a tool for their frustrated ambitions — but could no longer avoid what would happen next.

She was going to have to talk to her boss, the director of Ontario’s Heroes, the operational lead, Caleb Hagen. The talk was going to be about his plans for Maddy to infiltrate the Korps.

Maddy took the elevator down through several sub-basement levels, arriving at the executive wing, where another guard had to manually release the electronic door lock for them to enter. Hagen’s office was just down the hall, and they opened the door to be on the receiving end of an utter death glare from his personal secretary.

“Good morning, Lola,” Maddy sighed politely.

The elderly mourning dove woman continued to scowl. “He’s waiting,” she enunciated bitterly with a cluck of her tongue.

Maddy took a deep breath, and opened the door. Gathered around the conference table at one end of the long, windowless office were Hagen himself, a high-strung wolverine, and formerly the nearly-invulnerable “Canadian Shield” in his own superheroing days; Maddy’s team leader, Jules “Lightbox” Lafusée, a lanky flying squirrel; and her god-damned fucking nemesis, the slippery, skeevy little bastard of an ‘infiltration specialist’ who liked to antagonize and misgender her subtly enough she’d never had enough evidence to make an issue of it, the short brown rat known as Neal “Slider” Salton. Finally, joining by videoconference was Lawrence Rockwell, the head of the Provincial Heroes’ League; he was distractedly reviewing a briefing binder, his microphone muted. The Toronto skyline was visible through the window behind his desk.

Slider grinned menacingly. “Heeeeey, buddy! Guess who’s going to be your handler for this job,” he sniffed.

“Zip it, Salton,” Hagen growled. His sleeves were rolled up, and his tie was somehow already loose and rumpled at 10:00 in the morning. “Oakes, take a seat. Care to tell me why you’re a whole fucking hour late? And in front of my boss, as well?”

Her heart raced. At least this time, unlike their meetings the previous week, she wouldn’t be alone with the rage-prone director. “Answering an emergency call, sir!” she spouted, body tensed as she sat down. “It came in over comms, and I was in the right place at the right time to clear a road hazard.”

The wolverine’s eyes bulged, and he took a deep breath. “Oakes. Did you happen to mention to Dispatch, in the course of accepting the assignment, that you were supposed to report at 0900 for this intel strategy meeting?”

Maddy gritted their teeth, internally screaming. They had deeply hoped that arriving this late would have resulted in postponing the meeting. “Didn’t think of it, sir…? I thought protocol was to prioritize all emergency calls involving civilians in potential danger, unless specifically instructed otherwise by a superior, or the Ministry chain of command,” they said tersely, “Sir.”

Hagen grumbled, eyes narrowing as a sneer curled his lip. “Of course,” he snapped. He slid a standard-issue tablet down the conference table to the sheep-bear. “First of all: everything about this mission is classified, on a need-to-know basis. The only personnel who need to know are the five of us in this meeting and Doc Gallant. Do I make myself clear?”

Maddy nodded dutifully. “Yes, sir.”

“Speaking of Doc Gallant,” he mused, scanning his own tablet, “How are you adjusting to the psi-blockers?”

The sheep-bear had in fact met with OH’s medical director the previous Tuesday, before beginning their stakeout of HBS. Gallant was another last-generation Hero retired from the field, an unpowered super-science type with a brusque, patronizing manner to the less technically-inclined; he reminded Maddy of the first doctor they’d seen at the gender clinic in Calgary, years before. The bespectacled bull had handed them an unlabeled bottle of red and white capsules, his own novel formula, instructing them to take two daily—brushing off questions about side effects as ‘not relevant to the necessary requirements of efficacy and reliability.’

The doctor had merely insisted that the medication—he refused to even describe its contents, beyond ‘experimental,’ and ‘in testing with Health Canada’—would prevent having any thoughts or memories accessed by outside forces, whether organic wielders of psionic forces like Maddy, or the Korps’ dreaded Rose-Coloured Glasses. (To say nothing of consumer-grade technological knock-offs, such as the personal assistant headsets made by the Thorn Corporation.) Far better than the standard-issue blockers used by most government-sponsored hero teams, allegedly.

However, she wasn’t… actually… on the medication, per se. The first time she’d tried them, the pills gave her a dull headache and blunted control of her powers; trying to do something relatively simple, like hovering a can of seltzer from her fridge to the living room couch, had felt like playing a video game while wearing oven mitts. The bottle had consequently sat on her bathroom counter untouched for several days.

Anyway, I have the blockers if I really need them, right?

“No complaints, Mr. Hagen,” said Maddy, looking down at the table. The issued tablet blinked, full dossiers on Helical BioSpectra, Inc., and other known Korps operations in the Greater Toronto Area ready for access.

At that, Rockwell peered up, and unmuted his mic. “Caleb, I’ve got another meeting to make; two-thirds of the Prairie League is… concerned about the leadership of the other third, and it seems like you’ve got this well in hand. And, Oakes? Good luck.” The display abruptly blinked out to an idle screen.

“Good,” the wolverine grunted, rolling his eyes. “Let’s get down to business. Here’s the top-down view for the short term: You’re going to stake out the HBS office, and find a pretext to casually bump into their chief counsel, Ms. Dunlop, since you’ve already met the once. That’s your ‘in.’ Start crying about how cruel and abusive things are around here for your kind, some soft-hearted bloody nonsense like that. Make up something about having a bad childhood, if you need to. They won’t be able to resist trying to ‘save’ you,” he sneered, chuffed. “You’ll have an invitation to meet one of their recruiters before you know it.”

Maddy once again bit their tongue at the director’s terminology of ‘your kind,’ as the events of the previous week flashed through their mind. After a moment of what they hoped looked like deep thought, rather than simmering frustration that threatened to boil over into rage, the sheep-bear spoke. “Of… of course, sir. That makes sense…”

Hagen continued in a vaguely irritated tone. “That’s your first progress metric. You’ll check in daily with Salton for updates, got it?”

“I look forward to it,” Slider said unctuously. “I’ve always thought we’d make a good duo, pal.”

The director rolled his eyes silently at the black-clad rat, and turned to the flying squirrel at his other side. “Salton, in turn, will be reporting back to Lightbox and myself as needed, but otherwise staying out of your way in the field. When we reach the point of setting up a meet, Jules will handle logistics, and arrange for further backup or law enforcement involvement as needed; Salton will have your back on-site.”

Maddy nodded slowly, jaw set. “Sir? Am I expected to be on the regular duty roster at the same time?”

“No, Maddy,” Lightbox said kindly. “The official version will be that you’re still on sick leave. But at the same time, Director Hagen will arrange for a strategic leak that you’re in the penalty box for all the blowback to that interview you did, and aren’t taking it very well. It’ll look better for your cover story if there are rumours you’re unstable, and vulnerable to ‘help’ from the bad guys.”

“Exactly,” Hagen grunted. “Now, if you’ll turn to the slideshow queued up on your tablets, I’d like to review timeline projections, ongoing expectations, and refresh your memory about intel and counterintel operating procedures…”

The meeting had continued for another hour and a half before finally, mercifully, it was interrupted by the wolverine needing to take a new conference call—not from Rockwell, but his actual boss in the Deputy Solicitor General of Ontario’s office. Hagen had dismissed the three remaining attendees gruffly, and instructed Maddy to do anything but publicly return to the field, for the moment.

She wasn’t looking forward to having to spend time with Slider, but to be fair, she wasn’t looking forward to any part of the mission. Somehow, she couldn’t restrain herself from feeling unreasonably grateful to the Korps at large, for what Grace had done; the idea sent a shudder down her spine. The sheep-bear had already begun to doubt whether she really knew anything at all about the field of her chosen—no, not chosen, not really, arranged—career. She’d been lied to her whole life about what it meant to be a Hero. Wasn’t the corollary of that, necessarily, that she’d also been lied to her whole life about what it meant to be a villain?

Maddy stewed on it as they slowly ambled towards the cafeteria. Lunch would help their mood, at least. They ordered a huge salad, slathered in sweet honey mustard dressing, and topped with dried cranberries and several chicken breasts’ worth of lean white meat. As the sheep-bear carried their tray from the serving line into the seating area, they looked for their usual ideal seat—adjacent to others so as not to stand out too much, but alone at a table wherever possible. They found a good spot along the east wall, back to the panel of massive flatscreens running satellite channels from throughout Canada and around the world. A group of technicians and administrative staff were at the next table over, chattering dully.

Maddy momentarily considered scanning through the tablet’s dossiers in further detail – despite the length of the meeting she’d just escaped, Hagen had left that reading to her own time – but drew back her hand right before touching the fingerprint scanner. That was top, top secret information, and reading it in a common area, around staff lacking her particular security clearances, would be apt to make the director go ballistic. Instead, she pulled out her phone to flip through Instagram as she ate. Soon, though, despite the distraction, she couldn’t help hearing the conversation nearby. She looked over; the speaker was Ruth, a business analyst with whom she’d sometimes made small talk when they passed in the corridors.

“So that transgender, the one who works at my salon, the first time I saw him he was a male and then the second time a few months later he was a female; good for him? It’s so nice they can live their truth nowadays,” the peahen opined. There was a collective mumble of vague concurrence around the cafeteria table.

“Um,” the sheep-bear hesitated, tentatively raising a hand, “That’s, uh… not the best terminology, Ruth? You were talking about a trans woman, she was always female, you shouldn’t be saying ‘he’ and ‘him’ even in retrospect…”

The older woman looked taken aback. “No, no… I said ‘she,’ I’m sure of it? I must have. Anyway, you know, I’ve just had a lot on my mind what with Gary in the hospital, I’m sorry if I slipped up,” Ruth sniffed as she looked away.

“Oh, gosh, how’s Gary doing,” the technician to Ruth’s right asked solicitously. “You know we’re all supporting you two, right? It’s just awful, I hope your cousins are able to travel in.” Her other dining companions chattered with similar soothing words; the peahen smiled sadly, nodding, almost basking in the attention.

Maddy shrank into her seat, her face burning. Great; now she was the asshole for bringing it up. She quickly choked down the remainder of her lunch and fled the cafeteria.

This really was no place for them, the sheep-bear realized, pained, on their way back to the secured garage area where their beloved V-Max was parked. It never could be. They’d been deep in denial about the indignities of the situation, but this wasn’t okay. It hadn’t been okay for a long time, if ever. They had to do something about it while they had a chance. They had to do something soon.

She came to her parking space in the above-ground warehouse that served as the Lakeview facility’s concealed, secure parking garage. It was a narrow stall with a wall-mounted bracket for her helmet, and she reached for it. As she did, she heard a scuffling noise behind her. The sheep-bear tensed up as she instantly spun around, reflexively lashing a tentative telekinetic wave of force out in all directions around her. It wobbled her motorcycle on its kickstand, but more importantly, it had caught Slider off-guard; the rat staggered back from where he’d once again tried to sneak up behind her.

“So just what was that about being a good duo, Neal?” Maddy said acidly, as they held the helmet to their leather-jacketed chest. “Not sure how that adds up with skulking around, making like you’re going to stab me in the back. Or trip me up. Again.”

Salton seemed mildly chagrined, but resentful. “Uh. Hi. Look, dude—um, Madison—I didn’t mean anything by the skulking. I’m… sorry,” the rat forced out. “For today. And the thing—the thing last week.”

The sheep-bear growled. “Are you? Are you really? Or did you get chewed out for doing the class clown routine in front of Hagen?” She put on her helmet, flipped up the visor, and folded her arms in front of her chest, scowling. “Stay away from me when we’re not on an op, Neal. We’re not friends. You’re not some charmingly roguish comedian; you’re just an asshole. I have to work with you, and I can do that politely and professionally, but don’t insult me like that.”

Slider’s expression hardened. “Fine,” he whined. “You heard the bossman. I want a status update once a day, and if you do anything to make me look bad, you…” The rat rolled his eyes, and bared his buck teeth. “...You reliable, valued teammate, he’s going to hear about it. I’m not getting on his shit list, because the diversity hire can’t get the job done.”

“You think I don’t know what I’m doing? Just watch me, ‘buddy.’” Maddy flipped their visor down, mounted the bike, and nudged Salton back with their powers again—he stumbled slightly as he realized a tendril of force was pushing him out of their path, and yelped with irritation—before they rode home in a chilly rain.

After she’d doffed her boots and jacket in the apartment’s narrow entryway, she proceeded to the bedroom. She flopped her ursine bulk onto the fluffy purple comforter, groaning, and looked over to her small bedside table.

The HBS business card was still there, right where Maddy had left it.