Neither he nor the school pressed assault charges, although I was told years later it was still apparent his nose had been broken. My first semester at MIT I made deans list with a perfect 4.0. I sent a copy of my grades to Mr. Passili, but never got a response.
There was a police sniper on the far corner of the rooftop, but he was too busy watching the streets to notice my arrival. I moved to the south-east corner and dropped to a lower building. Two more rooftops led me to the alley where my motorcycle waited. I landed on the seat, cut down Cahuenga, and headed across town on Sunset.
I passed eleven infected in three blocks and shot each of them in the forehead. At Sunset and Las Palmas I stopped to put another round in the ear of a gray-skinned boy with a bloody mouth.
I was revising my estimates. Perhaps things had spread too far. Most civilians were following instructions and staying indoors, although some went too late. Stories were already circulating of the unlucky people who locked themselves in with infected family members who turned hours later. There was also a bothersome number who insisted on going out to fight the infected on their own. The majority of them were being killed, and a fair number became carriers themselves. If it spread any further, a safe zone would need to be established.
Several other “superheroes” had joined in the attempts to hold back the contagion. Regenerator, Banzai, and Gorgon were trying to keep order at the emergency shelters and field hospitals. Blockbuster, Midknight, and Cairax were holding the west side. Zzzap was trying to fight on both coasts, but I knew the constant travel was taxing him. The armed forces had deployed a prototype exoskeleton, heavily armed and armored, in Washington D.C. to help with containment, although I believed it was a publicity stunt to boost morale rather than a serious stratagem. The Dragon was, at my suggestion, fighting the exes directly since he was one of the few who could. I was worried he was beginning to develop some kind of feelings toward me.
In college I took several lovers, both male and female. It sprung from a desire for experimentation, although not in the way most college relationships are labeled. As I had suspected, sex turned out to be a fleeting diversion with no real rewards. Even more annoying, my skill as a partner was often judged on my appearance and not on any other abilities or aspects I brought to the arrangement. It was through these experiments I realized my beauty would always be my defining trait, no matter what a given situation required.
Over junior and senior year’s winter and summer breaks I was offered jobs modeling for Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch. I took them all and appeared in eleven different catalogs and two in-store ad campaigns. The money paid for two years of masters studies where I wrote a groundbreaking thesis on DNA fragment tracking and identification. Despite complete faculty backing, no journal would publish a scientific paper written by a twenty-two year old underwear model. Twenty-two rejections. By sheer coincidence, that year I was also ranked number twenty-two on Maxim’s “Hot 100 List,” between Elisha Cuthbert and Cameron Diaz.
I have double doctorates in biochemistry and biology, with further studies in psychology, anthropology, and structural engineering. I wrote a book on memory structures and mnemonic devices explaining how anyone could improve their recall by at least threefold. It sold less than four thousand copies and now can only be found in remaindered bookstores with a “70% Off” sticker. By contrast, a paparazzi photo of me posing on a runway at Cannes was downloaded over twenty-three million times because my top slipped and there is a clear view of my left nipple.
I knew I had the physical prowess and skills to have a direct, positive effect on the city of Los Angeles. If people were only willing to see me as an object, however, then I would oblige and operate outside the judicial system as an unnamed thing.
My last civilian appearance was an episode of Jeopardy at the age of twenty-six. I won seven episodes in a row by runaways before I became bored and stopped trying. I was the longest-running female contestant the show had ever had. That money, $570,400, financed my uniform and equipment.
A quartet of exes stumbled into view on Las Palmas drawn out by the noise of gunfire. Three women and a man. They had fresh blood on their mouths. I gunned the bike’s engine, spun the rear around, and headed toward them. A fifth and sixth wandered out of the narrow space between buildings. I came to a halt a dozen yards from them. With both weapons firing, it took three seconds to eliminate all of them.