Don Pizarro is an Asian-American who loves being asked "Where are you from?" so that he can truthfully answer, "Cleveland" and enjoy the ensuing discomfort.

He lives with his wife in upstate New York. His non-fiction has appeared in AMERICAN NERD MAGAZINE and MCSWEENEY'S INTERNET TENDENCY; this is his first fiction publication.

I usually enjoyed walking through the University in the early spring, especially during a warm, weekend dusk. I liked the sight of brown ivy starting to green. I liked the annual novelty of watching the sun set later and later. The true novelty, though, was being at a place in life where I'd even notice those things. Not too long ago, all I'd notice were the building signs, with the names of weathered, century-old stone buildings written in an anemic twenty-first century font. It struck me as hypocritical, or at the very least, tacky.

Tonight, the signs seemed to stand out.

I was on my way to meet an old acquaintance who rudely demanded it. Given who she was, I took my old sweet time walking to the secluded park where I occasionally enjoyed meals in the fresh air. It's really a ten square-foot patch of grass with two benches underneath a lamp post, an afterthought between two recently constructed buildings. Heading for the benches and dragging my feet along the brick-faced walkway, I saw a plain woman with red hair, longer than I'd remembered, sitting with her back to me. I saw an envelope next to her.

"Ms. Blackburn, what a surprise," I said, unsurprised. "What's it been, nine years?"

"Nine years, three months, and four days, Mr. Klein," she said. She turned her pony-tailed head to one side and used her peripheral vision to watch me, rather than look straight at me. I walked around her to let her scan me and took a seat next to her on the other side of the package which she slid over to me.

"I'll make this quick, Kinesis. Leave her alone."

I didn't protest the use of my old moniker. She'd have wanted me to start something. I smiled instead, as if complimented. I picked up the package, reached in, and pulled out a thin stack of photos. "Why should I?" I ask. I flipped through the photos of Christina and me, mostly bird's-eye views, but with a few shots of us in public places taken at point blank range. Nice message, I thought. "I'm surprised you didn't sneak into her bedroom. You'd have loved some of those pictures, let me tell you."

Blackburn's eyes started to glow. A gaze that could melt your heart, along with the rest of your major organs.

"I should point out," I said, "I might be out of practice, but I think I still remember how to force eyelids shut. That could get messy. You really want Red Athena's headless cyborg body to be discovered in Cassandra Blackburn's clothes?" I pretended to be unconcerned as I pack the pictures into the envelope and stuff them into my jacket.

"Try it," she said. "It'd be worth it, just to get Christina away from you."

"Listen, how could I know who she was? She still uses her ex-husband's name. I had no clue until she told me her maiden name." I smiled because even all these months later, it was still the funniest coincidence. "I said to myself, 'Nah, it couldn't be.' And,then--"

"She showed you the scrapbook, I know. She told me."

"She asked if I could keep a secret. I figured, 'Why not?' After all, she kept mine. Maybe she figured it was her way of returning my trust."

"You had to keep that secret; otherwise you'd wake up tomorrow morning in a government hole somewhere." Her eyes returned to normal. "Still, I'm surprised you even told her," she said.

I could've pounced, right then and there. The old me, that is. I wasn't fast enough anymore, but the old instincts were still there. I saw five ways that I could take her out if I was my twenty-nine year-old self. But then, Blackburn wouldn't have ever let her guard down like this ten years ago.

"I've changed," I told her.

"No, you haven't. Not completely. Your kind never does. You just polish up your act. You make deals and do people's dirty work, and just like that, all's forgiven."

"I did a few favors for Uncle Sam, sure...stuff that you and the almighty P.R.I.S.M. don't have the stones for. Still, I know how hard it is to let go of some grudges."

"And, I know that past behavior predicts future behavior. Between death traps, the assaults, membership in the League of Thieves--"

"Oh, please," I said. "Does that mean you're going to break my arms again? Fry me with your eye-beams--"

"Burying me alive, that was my all-time favorite--"

"That was one time," I said. "Your problem is that you're an ingrate. And, to think I risked life and limb to save you from the Typhoid Monger." In exchange for a presidential pardon for everything I did as the "evil" Kinesis, I had been offered a mission to assassinate the Typhoid Monger which I did just as, it so happened, he was about to kill Blackburn inside a nuclear power plant.

"You'd have fed me to the Typhoid Monger if it wouldn't have messed up your deal," she said. It wasn't true, though I did enjoy watching him smack her around for a bit.

"Aren't you violating the deal by harassing me?" I asked.

"I don't care about Homeland Security's Faustian deal. This is about my family."

"Nothing in the deal says I can't date a relative," I say, "especially when I didn't know--"

"I don't care. I'm warning you," she said. "Hurt Christina, get her hurt, and you're gonna hurt."

I felt the hairs on my arms stand on end. It was my cue to avert my eyes to avoid the flash as Cassandra teleported away.

"Whatever," I whispered. With her senses, I bet she probably heard.

A few days later, I'm eating a chicken-salad sandwich for dinner in that same spot, watching the students walk past before my evening classes. A baby-faced man in brand-new but disheveled clothes and carrying a satchel broke off from the stream of pedestrians and sat next to me.

"Rigby?" I asked. "You look absolutely stupid in that getup."

"Appearances, Professor," he said quietly as he pulled a thin binder out of his bag. He spoke up for the benefit of passers-by, "I just had a few things to run past you."

"You idiot," I whisper. Rigby hands me a few sheaves of paper, mostly reports and memos from Teleodyne, Inc. for whom I, shall we say, freelance. As always, whenever my Teleodyne handler scurries out from under his rock, it's because someone in the Home Office is on his case, which means Rigby feels he has to pass the stress on down the line.

"This couldn't wait until I was done with my sandwich? You couldn't have just called?" I shoved the papers back at him.

"You're not concerned?"

I shake my head. "Looks like Red Athena just needed to work out some aggression. You really can't blame her, you know. You finance and arm some ex-jarhead who takes up the mantle of the Typhoid Monger. What did you expect? You might as well paint a sign on his back that says, 'Unleash your repressed anger on my ass.' So, what's it to do with me?"

"We know she talked with you about her cousin. We couldn't hear your words, but we saw the photos from the satellite feed," Rigby said.

"She must've decided the conversation was private. You think I told her something I shouldn't have?" I ask.

"We wondered, but P.R.I.S.M. probably would have paid us a visit by now if you had. No, the Home Office is just bothered by the additional scrutiny you've garnered. We know how greatly you value your privacy...and how closely it's tied to ours, nowadays."

"My home, the labs--they're either unknown or legally off limits to her. I'd know if she was snooping around in any case and so would you."

"She seeks you out for the first time in nearly a decade, apparently after having surveilled you for a time--"

"Any idiot could've taken those photos," I interrupted.

"--and then she gets into a confrontation with the new Typhoid Monger. If she would've gotten a piece of his tech to her P.R.I.S.M. friends, they'd uncover a trail to us, which would bring her straight to you. That's bad for everyone involved, don't you think?"

"Well, kill her, then. Or, keep the Monger on a tighter leash," I said. "Either way, why is this my problem?"

Rigby held his hand up to calm me down. "The Home Office is nervous, Professor Klein. And when they're nervous, I'm nervous, and when I'm nervous, one would expect that an ex-convict--"

"Record's expunged," I corrected.

"--who received a very lucrative deal from said Home Office would feel a little nervous, too."

"Oh, get to the point," I demanded.

"End your relationship with Christina Thorne," he said.

"Or what?" I mocked. I stifled my volume. "The company's 'ultimate agenda' would still be on a dry-erase board at the Home Office if it wasn't for me. So I think they'd know better than to screw with me."

"No one's screwing with you, Norton," says Rigby.

"I've given Teleodyne everything they know, but not everything I know. I'm not above putting the outfit back on, you know." I could tell Rigby wanted to laugh. Hell, I almost wanted to.

"Don't embarrass yourself," he said. Look, just consider what I said. Sleep on it. Look at the big picture, then decide."

"Oh, go away, you toad," I said. "I'll think about it." It was a lie. I just wanted him off my back. Times like these made me wonder why I didn't just pedal my wares to the government, instead.

I didn't feel like dealing with my evening classes that night. The sleepy part-time engineering students seemed more dead than usual, especially the non-traditional ones. Some of them are older than me, working to get higher degrees to keep jobs they've had for years, struggling so they wouldn't be edged out by dumb, wet-nosed kids with extra letters after their names. I couldn't fathom doing all that work just to stay in the same place.

Forty minutes in, I decided it was more trouble than it was worth to wake them up, so I gave them two equations that tied them up for the rest of the class time to give me some time to mull over Rigby's suggestion. I decided he could bite me.

We were long past the point where Teleodyne could scare me with anything, I reasoned. As far as Homeland Security was concerned, my nose had been clean for nine years, and no one at the Home Office could reveal anything unpleasant that wouldn't be traced right back to them.

Having settled that, I rehearsed my "Screw You" speech on the drive home. I sauntered through my front door feeling pretty smug. Even more so, when I found that Christina had let herself in and was waiting for me with leftovers in the oven. "I was feeling all 1950s," she said. Who was I to complain? But, I looked on the dining table and saw yet another stack of brochures and letters from all sorts of charities piled up next to my checkbook. Feed These Children, Cure That Disease, Save the Victims, etc. I sighed with a smile.

"What've I said, dear? Write out whatever check you want, but no more than ten charities. You want to add one to the list, you have to take one off."

Christina shook her head as she set a bottle of wine on the table for me to open. "That's the thing, it doesn't do any good for me to be doing all that. Your karma needs work, not mine."

I half-ignored her as I sat myself down and focused on the corkscrew. I pictured it rising and balancing atop the wine bottle, and it did, long enough for me to twist it into the cork. "Society says my debt's paid. I've been walking the straight-and-narrow," I said. "What more could karma ask for?"

"You cut a deal, that's not the same," she chided.

"Doing some good in the world, that's what you have to do. That's why you've been so good about keeping your cute little nose clean."

I smiled at her, thinking about how good that wine was going to taste. It was time for a strategic withdrawal from the conversation. "Okay, okay, how about this one?" I pick the second brochure from the top. "Refugee children need medical help, too, right? Perfect." I opened my checkbook. "How's ten grand? No, a hundred!"

The show makes Christina smile. "Doesn't it feel good being, 'Norton Klein, Philanthropist?'"

"Better than 'Kinesis, Terrorist-for-Hire,'" I admitted.

We noshed some before settling in to watch the eleven o'clock news. If I had the remote, I would've changed the channel as soon as I heard the anchorman say, "A violent meta-human confrontation earlier today ended

with, possibly...a fallen hero. The following video may be disturbing to some viewers."

Christina's eyes widened as she watched the shaky, blurred amateur video footage of a sleek robotic female hovering over a group of six men in black fatigues and body armor led by a seventh, a muscular hulk of a man wearing a gas mask and a yellow-hazmat outfit one size too small.

They cut to a field reporter standing in front of a web of yellow caution tape, who said, "P.R.I.S.M. hero, Red Athena, was responding to what appeared to be a bank robbery gone awry. The new Typhoid Monger, whom she fought just days ago, resurfaced along with several unknown armed accomplices at this Third City Bank branch. Witnesses say the battle that destroyed the front of the building ended quickly."

A fat, bald man said, "Yeah, it happened quick. I'm standing at the ATM outside and this big, ugly guy walks into the bank and starts smashing stuff while his cronies, they go in with bags and these funny looking guns and stuff. I run behind some cars, and then Red Athena shows up. She goes in, and tosses each one of 'em out the bank. Then, her and the ugly guy start punching each other, then the guys in black--"

They cut back to the video as the field reporter said, "The Typhoid Monger's accomplices appeared to be armed with some new weapon, powerful enough to damage the formidable cyborg."

His voice-over kept repeating key phrases like "valiant struggle" and "shocking ending" as the report looped the battle footage. In it, Blackburn quickly took down two of her body-armored assailants from a distance as they fired wavy blue energy from their rifles. I wondered if those guns were what I thought they were. When Christina and I saw one of the beams hit Blackburn and cause her to fall, I was sure. They were using Focused Electro-Magnetic Pulse rifles of my design.

The camera followed her descent to the ground, where three of the men in black fired on her at point-blank range, after which the Typhoid Monger picked up her twitching mechanical body by the neck and slammed it back down. Then, all the villains gathered around her, and in a flash, disappeared.

I took the remote and put my arm around Christina who was frozen with horror. When I switched the TV off, she started to sob. I spent the rest of the night trying to console her with a truism from my old life:

If you don't see a body, you can't assume anything. So much for a quiet evening, I thought.

We stayed up through the night, which forced me to sleep through the morning rather than grade assignments, as was my routine. I wanted to cancel class, but it would only end up being more trouble than just going in and winging it. I suppose I would have stayed with Christina if she'd asked, but she said I was right, that I should go. She knew this sort of thing wasn't uncommon and had faith that her cousin's P.R.I.S.M. teammates were undoubtedly looking for her.

I barely made it through the front door of the engineering building when Rigby ran out of a nearby snack room to meet me. "Professor, a word," he said as he pulled me into the lounge by the arm and shut the door. This time, he was dressed like his normal self, in a cheap black suit and sunglasses. When pressured, as he obviously was, his wannabe Black-Ops operator-façade faded, revealing him for the company man that he'll always be.

"I have class, Rigby--"

"No, you don't," he said. "We've fixed it. We called the department, put signs on the doors complete with next week's assignments...you're all covered. We need you. Now."

I sighed. "Fine, but I need to be home by 10, even if I have to dig my way back up with a spoon. I'm just letting you know, now."

I followed Rigby back out the front door where a tan SUV was waiting. Five words into his explanation, and my head started to hurt. I kept repeating to myself, "I don't need this now. I just don't need this now."

I lost track of the time between the University and the unfinished upscale housing development that was a front for one of Teleodyne's local underground safehouses. Rigby hurried me into the Foreman's trailer and we took the hidden lift down into a makeshift R&D lab. It was part hospital room, part computer lab, and smelled like a garage where you get your oil-changed in ten minutes. On a table lay an unconscious Red Athena with six technicians buzzing around her with sensors or checking her hook-ups to diagnostic machinery. She was still in her battle-droid form: advanced mechanical musculature in a metallic feminine shell with scarlet trim. I always thought she was more beautiful that way rather than covered in synthetic skin and hair.

Rigby and I went into an adjacent observation room. I put my bag and coat in a corner and eyed the stack of preliminary data on the table.

"You know what kind of position this puts me in?" I asked. "There's a reason I stipulated that I neverbe hands-on!"

"Can't be helped, Professor," he said. "We don't think P.R.I.S.M. can trace her here, but there's no guarantee, so we need to work fast. You were our closest expert."

In the car, Rigby had explained that Blackburn fell into a trap. She had actually uncovered a link between the new Typhoid Monger and Teleodyne. The Monger got lucky and they got Blackburn here, giving them a golden opportunity. They didn't want her dead, if they could avoid it. Teleodyne just wasn't ready for a head-on confrontation with P.R.I.S.M. just yet. They had other (as always, in my opinion, over-devious) plans.

"Just get us pointed in the right direction and Christina need never know. We have technicians working on erasing Blackburn's memory," Rigby said.

"The Home Office doesn't like the idea of relying solely on FEMP-rifles. All you need to do is look at the tech while we have one of them right here, and work out something we can use. We know how you've been dying to get in there. Now's your chance."

When Rigby was right, he was right, but I hesitated, just to put up the appearance of resistance. I don't need to look up at Rigby; I could hear the smugness in his voice when he said, "Just let us know if you need anything," before strutting out onto the shop floor. Still, I thought, the payoff just might be worth it.

I always theorized that P.R.I.S.M. cybernetics must function along the same lines as the tech in my old costumes. It had to be the same basic circuitry I used to amplify my own natural telekinesis. What I couldn't figure out was how cyborgs like Blackburn could channel and diversify their mental energies with little more than their human brains as the organic component. As I glanced over the preliminary data, I started to see it. It was so obvious!

I was so absorbed with assimilating the data that I jumped when I heard a small explosion. What followed didn't surprise me at all: energy blasts, breaking bones, and the screams of "Oh, God! She's awake!

She's awake!" I hit the red button next to the observation window to lower the blast shield, but it wouldn't come completely down over the window. I crouched by the glass and peered through the opening to see Blackburn--awake and with the doors of her chest compartment open swinging with her movements--throwing, kicking and punching people around. Rigby took an eye-blast in the back as he reached for what looked like a FEMP-rifle. Blackburn went over to him and picked him up by the throat, and I took that as my cue to run for the door. I almost made it.

"Klein, wait!" Rigby sputtered. Dammit.

Blackburn slammed Rigby against a wall, knocking him out. With her back turned, I could see the extent of her damage. The circuitry in the back of her head was exposed and smoldering. This wasn't good, I thought, especially when I saw the look on her face as she turned her head one hundred and eighty degrees to face me.

"This wasn't my idea, Cassandra! I barely know these guys. They just recruited me!" It amazed even me how fast the words spilled out of my mouth.

"Liar!" she said. She dropped Rigby. "My ears recorded them talking about you while I was unconscious, you scum. 'He's wanted for this for ages. No way he'd pass this up,'" she said, synthesizing Rigby's voice.

"That's a lie," I plead. "I've changed. I'm not like that anymore. It's been almost ten years, c'mon!" In a flash, she stood nose to nose with me, smelling of burnt metal and ozone. She punched a hole in the wall near my head.

"Look, I can help you," I said. "I can get you out of here!" I almost believed that I really wanted to help.

"Shut up, you scum!" She grabbed me by the neck and squeezed. It must've been the head wound.

Her body jerked, hit by a FEMP-rifle blast. She fell to her knees, but she was still functioning from what I saw. She must have gotten a force shield up in time.

A bleeding Rigby stood at the far end of the lab, holding the rifle. "Not smart, Professor. First her, then you," he said.

It must have been the fear and the stress, because somehow I found the focus to force the rifle out of Rigby's hands and into the air. Blackburn spun her head around again and eye-blasted him at full power, incinerating him. She turned back. I guess I had expected to see gratitude on her face.

She struggled to her feet and closed her chest compartment. "Just you and me, Kinesis. Wanna know what I've been waiting for ages to do?"

I willed the FEMP-rifle to my right hand, but before I got my finger on the trigger, Blackburn fried it red-hot. The front of the gun turned to slag and my hand burned. I yelled and begged. I doubted she was listening. Her eyes were about to flare again. Better safe than sorry, I thought as I willed her eyelids shut.

She screamed as she grabbed her head. It started to glow, and the brighter it did, the louder she screamed until the back of her head burst, spewing out circuitry and gray matter. She collapsed in a pool of her own brain.

The pain in my hand barely registered now as I tried to assess my situation. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to collapse from it all, but I didn't. I slowly started to feel a familiar clarity, the clarity of knowing exactly what to do when all hell broke loose. It was probably what told me to make for the door, to make for the gun, to try and make a deal.

Cassandra was right, in a way. Habits might change, but primitive hundred-thousand year-old instincts don't. Those instincts told me that I couldn't let Teleodyne find me here like this, and I definitely couldn't let P.R.I.S.M. find me here at all.

I had enough time with the preliminary data to know precisely where in the base of Blackburn's artificial skull I had to look for her teleportation module. I blocked out the smell as I scraped through the remains of her brain to find the thankfully undamaged component. If my theories were right, I could use it as is.

I checked the technicians. All dead. I knew at that point that whatever grief I might have eventually felt for Blackburn wasn't going to materialize. She just fried them all and I was going to be next. I was relieved. Better her than me.

I went to a console with a telephone. I picked it up and heard two rings before a voice on the other end answered, "Telos's Greek Café?" I tell him, "You're going to want a clean-up team here, or something...A.S.A.P." With my good hand, I blasted anything that looked electronic with the FEMP-rifle, computers, cameras, consoles, anything that might not corroborate the story I planned to tell. I grabbed the data and my belongings, and I used Blackburn's teleporter to beam myself the hell out of there.

There was just enough time to make it to one of my own safehouses, patch up my hands, and make it clear to Teleodyne's Home Office that it may be in their best interest to take another look at our arrangement.

The Parahuman Reconnaisance, Intervention, and Surveillance Mechanoid team must have had their collective heads up their behinds, because a full week went by before their official announcement that the body of superhero and friend, Red Athena, had been found. The nation mourned, especially Christina. On the evening the news broke, I sat comforting her in her living room as she mourned with the scrapbook of Blackburn's exploits that she took from its usual hiding place. She didn't notice how distracted I was.

The negotiations with Teleodyne hadn't gone quite as well as I expected. I could tell the Home Office didn't buy my story. But their lust for my analysis of Blackburn's schematics overpowered their suspicions. I managed to haggle only a modest increase in payment and I was now on a tighter leash, but I ensured my survival and that of Christina for the time being.

Our mourning was interrupted by a glow from the television set. Lines of energy shot out from the screen and formed into the holographic image of a large muscular metallic humanoid frame with an enlarged cranium, the battle-droid form of P.R.I.S.M. leader, Mercury Black.

"Ms. Thorne. Norton," he greeted.

"Jonathan," I responded. He ignored me and motioned to Christina to stay seated when she wiped her eyes and attempted to rise.

"Ms. Thorne, I just wanted to convey my personal condolences and my vow that this won't go unpunished," he said. I could've been wrong, but I thought I saw Black's mechanical eyes look at me. "P.R.I.S.M. won't rest until someone answers for this!"

"Is there anything I can do?" Christina asked. "Maybe Norton could help--"

"Thank you, no, Ms. Thorne," said Black. "We know that Cassandra had nothing but full faith in your discretion, despite your, ah, company."

He was definitely staring at me, now.

"P.R.I.S.M. is hoping we can count on it, too," he continued. “Cassandra died a hero, even though no one can know her true identity."

"I understand, Mr., um...Mercury Black." Christina smiled for the first time since she heard the news, as he thanked her for her assistance and understanding.

"We're here for you if you need us," he said as his hologram faded.

Christina flopped back on the couch and hugged the scrapbook tight. "Honey," she said to me, "I could really use a cup of tea, do you mind?"

I waited for the water to boil in the kitchen as the small thirteen-inch set she had by the toaster lit up. There was no holographic projection this time; just Mercury Black's face.

"We'll be watching her, Norton...and you, too."

"Jonathan," I whispered, "if I didn't know any better, I'd swear you were implying something. She was my family, too."

"Shut up," he said. "You're mixed up in all of this."

"You know this, how?" I asked as the kettle whistled. I shut it off and reached for a mug, trying to act as nonchalant as possible.

"We know you talked to her five days before she disappeared."

"And...?" I asked.

He was silent for a moment. "Out of respect for Ms. Thorne, we're not going to do anything without more proof. But, if I find out you had anything to do with this--"

"Oh, get off my back," I said as I reached for the TV plug with my mind and yanked it. I was unnerved. Still, if they had anything substantial, they'd have come for me by now, I supposed. As if I didn't have enough to worry about. Playing both sides doesn't work as well when both sides are watching you too closely. I didn't have to play these games in the old days.

"Honey?" Christina called. "My tea--"

"COMING!" I yelled. I quickly lower my voice. "I'm sorry, honey...it's coming...one more sec." I carry the tea out to her, deciding that I just need to keep a low profile for awhile.

Christina didn't seem to notice my outburst. She had busied herself by poring over a new stack of charity brochures. "These were her favorites, Honey. We could do something big, in her name. Maybe it'd be good for the karma--"

I didn't even think. "Jesus! Would you give it a rest with the karma?" I shouted. I slammed the tea onto the coffee table. She looked up at me.

I missed the old days.