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A story from the world of A story from the world of A story from the world of A story from the world of MasksMasksMasksMasks By R. M. HendershotBy R. M. HendershotBy R. M. HendershotBy R. M. Hendershot

Illustrations by Derrick FleeceIllustrations by Derrick FleeceIllustrations by Derrick FleeceIllustrations by Derrick Fleece

1

Trevor Gray wished he hadn’t had to come to Akihabara.

Tokyo’s high-tech mecca pulsed and buzzed around the clock, neon flashing from every

direction as a thousand cameras clicked and whirred from every angle. At any given

moment, someone could be taking Trevor’s picture from a dozen different vantage points,

and he was always brightly lit. Trevor tugged his stolen baseball cap a little lower over his

eyes and walked as fast as he dared. It was dangerous to be aboveground, even at night,

even here. Especially here.

It was maddening to think he couldn’t get out of Japan until he’d gone through the most

crowded, camera-dense part of it. But all those cameras were part of the Akiba package,

which also included narrow, densely packed warrens of electronics dealers selling every

product and component under the fluorescent sun. He would have to buy his parts here

and put them together himself, unless he wanted to try to forge a U.S. passport with a cheap

laptop and printer from Yobodashi Camera. At least he had real money this time, earned

with a quick and dirty hack-for-hire executed an hour ago from an Internet café. But he

needed better equipment than that if he wanted a passport that would get him on a plane

out of the country. Ships were too slow, now that they were following him so closely.

Trevor kept his eyelids as low as he dared over his eyes. The cap mostly covered his

light wheat-colored hair, his most obviously Caucasian feature, but his dark blue eyes were

so out of place in his face that no one ever forgot them. On his first day in Tokyo, people had

stopped him on the street to take pictures of the funny-colored gaikokujin. He’d frowned at

their questions, trying to explain in broken Japanese that no, he didn’t bleach his hair, and

no, he didn’t wear colored contacts—he’d just been born this way. They laughed and took

more pictures. His friends, patient and silent beside him, smiled at his discomfort.

Now he spoke perfect Japanese, and had no friends, and a picture that hit the forums

too soon might get him killed or worse. Impressive for someone who wouldn’t even qualify

for a driver’s license back home.

Trevor drifted with the crowd, silently searching for a stall that might sell him the right

kind of scanner quickly and without archiving its security footage. Ahead of him, a girl

about his own age paused to gawk at a display of cellphones, her mouth hanging open, the

giant pointed ears on the crown of her oversized orange fleece fox hat flopping in

completely different directions. Trevor wondered how much one of those hats would cost

him. It would cover his hair, and the shadow of the hood would hide his eyes. That would

almost make up for the color. A matching orange purse dangled loosely from the girl’s arm,

temporarily forgotten as she stared.

And as Trevor watched, the purse vanished.

He was moving before the girl turned around, lunging into a sprint after the stocky

man in the hooded windbreaker, now pounding away into the warren as fast as his legs

would carry him. Trevor heard the air sing in his ears as he picked up speed, and for a

moment it was like the good old days again. He was back on the rooftops of Chicago,

running pell-mell after Dr. Maligno or some other miscreant of the moment, and his

adoptive father would be there with a dry joke and a grin behind his mask when they ran

their quarry to ground.

Best sidekick I ever had, Jude would say, ruffling Trevor’s hair as the boy stood panting

and beaming over a cuffed mad scientist or bank robber.

I’m the only sidekick you ever had, Trevor would remind him.

Exactly, Jude would say.

The purse snatcher ducked and wove around strolling shoppers, the orange purse

flailing from his hand, the flash of bright color drawing Trevor in like a homing beacon. He

was only four or five yards behind now. Now three. Now two.

Of course, Jude wouldn’t be there at the end of the chase this time. But the girl would

be happy to get her purse back. It had been a long time since Trevor had done anything

altruistic, and it would be nice to leave Japan a little better than he found it. He started to

smile as he closed in.

One yard behind, and he leaped and tackled the purse snatcher. They went down

together in a tangle, tumbling and rolling in perfect choreography. Trevor came up on top

with his knee in the man’s back, the purse in one hand.

Trevor lifted his head, unable to keep the grin off his face as she scanned the crowd for

the girl. With that hat, she wouldn’t be hard to find—

In the space of a heartbeat, the smile died.

The girl was nowhere in sight. Trevor didn’t recognize the new faces coming toward

him out of the crowd, not personally, but he recognized the look of foxhounds on a hot

scent. There were four of them, in pairs, closing in from two sides.

Trevor instantly flung the purse in a third direction and jumped up and ran in the

fourth, even faster than he’d given chase a moment earlier. He cut through a crosspassage,

then another, taking turns at random. They couldn’t herd him if he didn’t let them get close,

and they couldn’t predict him if even he didn’t know where he was going. He’d been

stupid, he knew. Japan’s crime rate was a fraction of America’s. It was ridiculous to think

he’d just happen on a chance to play hero again on his one day out of hiding.

One of a thousand remembered rules of Jude’s stirred in the back of his brain: Stupid

villains get caught. Stupid heroes get dead. He ran faster.

Past a display of digital cameras, around a cell phone kiosk, down a narrow alley of

memory chips and a random turn to the left, and there was a stairway to the surface

around here somewhere, there had to be, he could jump the turnstile at the Akiba station

and be away in moments if he could just find the damn door—

And a tall, slender man with a face he did recognize stepped out of nowhere and

snaked an arm around Trevor’s neck. Trevor twisted, trying to get free. He jabbed stiff

fingers into the arm, but the fear was working against him now, and he couldn’t

concentrate enough to find the right nerve clusters. He jabbed again, and missed again.

There was a pinch in the side of his neck, and he saw the needle pull away as his fingers and

toes began to go numb.

His last thought before the darkness swallowed him was that he really wished he

hadn’t come to Akihabara.

*

What a night, birdwatchers! Just when I thought I’d be able to knock off

early and hit a few clubs, I find Captain Catastrophe and his crew of killjoys (say that ten times fast with

marbles in your mouth) picking up a shipment of something from a warehouse off Grand Avenue. I did

my usual—jump in headfirst, crack a few skulls—but the dashing Captain got away once again. It is SO

embarrassing to be crushing on your archnemesis. This never happens to the World Justice Federation. I

thought about hanging around to see if the mystery vials in the Captain’s boxes were STAN

(Superhuman Talents And No Refunds—just say no to drugs, kids, unless they let you lift a city bus), but

the LAPD loves me even less than he does. Sigh.

2

Night in Los Angeles was a cloak of cool wind and welcoming shadows. Rae Masterson

closed her eyes, stepped to the edge of the roof, and paused, balancing on the rim of the

world. Below her the sodium-orange glare of streetlamps and the cyclopean blaze of

passing headlights glowed like hellfire, but up here in the dark it was just her and the birds

and the song of the wind off the distant sea.

Rae spread her arms, imagined herself flying like the scarlet falcon emblazoned on the

back of her tunic. The homemade costume—tunic, hood, mask, gloves—was another layer

over her street clothes, but somehow putting on Peregrine’s skin was like throwing off a

straitjacket. In the dark, behind the mask, she was free. So what if she had to tackle

Madame Mortale, or punch Captain Catastrophe in the face from time to time? People did

worse things for the rare chance to be fully themselves.

Rae straightened her spine, lowered her arms, crouched briefly and then launched

herself into space. Below her a shout went up as Captain Catastrophe spotted her, but it

was too late to stop gravity—or destiny. She was dropping into the center of his group of

goons, laughing and lashing out with fists and feet and in her mind she was still flying—

and the bell rang.

Against her better judgment, Rae opened her eyes. As always, it was a bad idea. Stained

beige walls drifted into focus. A faded inspirational poster on wall featured a salmon

leaping from the water, gamely headed upstream. Ah. Health class. Not worth waking up

for, after all. Rae was pretty sure someone had cropped an open-mouthed grizzly bear out

of that photo.

Around her, classmates lurched to their feet, heaving backpacks off the floor and

shuffling hunchbacked out into the hall. A binder clipped her ear as its owner swung it into

a bag. She didn’t bother to flinch, but the flash of pain reminded her knee that it hadn’t

throbbed in several minutes, so it started pounding in time to her heartbeat, aching extra

hard to make up for the precious time she’d lost to the daydream.

That’s right, Masterson, Rae thought sourly as she clambered out of her seat, wobbling

on her good leg. Think about jumping off rooftops. God forbid you should think about what

happens when you land. Peregrine, savior of the city, my butt. She shouldered her own

backpack and limped toward the door.

“Oh. My. God.”

Rae stopped and sighed. She turned around, still hobbling.

Behind her stood a rail-thin girl with waist-long, elaborately crimped blonde hair that

took up more space than the rest of her, and an attitude that took up more space than the

Goodyear blimp. She stood with one bony hand on the hip of her designer jeans, her heavily

glossed lips parted in a snarl of disgust. Behind her, a semicircle of lesser clones, in varying

hues of hair and fashion, stood in complementary poses—outthrust hips, tilted heads,

folded arms, arched eyebrows. Rae reflected privately that cheerleading was good for

something after all; Kat Regan and her posse could pose in formation.

“Tell me,” Kat said, “you are not wearing that to school. Standards. Look it up.”

Rae didn’t answer, momentarily distracted by the serpentine tattoo pattern on Kat’s

spray-paint-tight shirt. Any other student caught wearing that would have been suspended.

Cheerleaders and their dress-code exemptions. It’s a never-ending mystery.

“Hey!” Kat snapped. “What’s your trauma? I’m talking to you!”

Rae contemplated her own outfit for a moment without looking down at it. What was

she wearing? It was black, she knew that, as it always was. Black on black on black, with

thick eyeshadow and lash-gluing mascara. Black went with everything, especially when you

got dressed in the dark after a night spent charging around rooftops.

Enough black, combined with enough eye makeup and several dozen bracelets to hide

the scars she didn’t actually have, would get her out of an awful lot of classes. Everyone

knew girls who mixed black clothes and too much makeup were emotionally disturbed,

even if their test scores were in the upper stratosphere. They certainly weren’t trying to

conceal lean muscle built up from roofrunning, or bruises from battles with the forces of

evil. No.

But try explaining that to Kat Regan. Rae sometimes fantasized about telling Kat that

all the cool masks were wearing basic black this year. But Kat didn’t read anything that

didn’t have celebrity photos at the top of the page, and the teachers sometimes made Rae

help her with the larger words, so what were the odds Kat had even heard of Peregrine?

The Rae Kat knew was more of a mask than anything Peregrine wore.

“Hey!” Kat snapped her fingers an inch from Rae’s nose. “I’m talking here!”

Rae blinked, caught off-guard. “Sorry,” she blurted. “I didn’t realize you needed help

with that, too.”

Kat flinched. Her posse rippled as they switched poses, and several of them let out a

low oooooo.

Rae turned and limped hurriedly off into the hall, cursing herself under her breath.

There was no point in sniping at Kat just because Catastrophe’s stupid luck had wrenched

her knee. Besides, too many cracks like that and people might start listening to Rae when

she talked—or worse, notice her injuries—and then how would she slip out of school

unobserved to chase bad guys?

She heard Kat behind her, trying to salvage the exchange. “Honestly,” the girl was

saying, just loud enough that people might not hear her on the soccer field, “I will never

understand emo people. I mean, who fakes a limp?”

Rae snorted. Now there was an excuse she hadn’t considered.

“Seriously,” Kat went on, “Peregrine is right. Anyone who wears that much black only

does it because that’s all goths give to Goodwill.”

Rae tripped and nearly stumbled facefirst into a bank of lockers.

What the hell? *

Hello, silver lining! It seems I have admirers. Somebody at the World Justice

Federation messaged me through this blog last night after the fracas with Captain Cutie-Pie, and I have a

job offer. That’s right, you are reading the words of the next superteam candidate! The interview’s

tonight.

So this seems like a good time to make a little announcement. Call your friends and gather ’round,

birdwatchers, because just 24 hours from now the video feed on this blog goes live and you get a show

to tell the grandkids about. If you’ve been wondering who I am behind this oh-so-stylish mask, this is

your chance to satisfy your curiosity …

3

Trevor’s breathing woke him up. Specifically, the fact that he couldn’t. His lungs burned

from oxygen deprivation, and the throbbing in his skull forced his eyes open. He blinked

muzzily.

And discovered he was blind.

Eyes open, eyes shut, there was no difference. Only dark. He could feel himself blinking,

but nothing happened. Memories flooded in to replace his sight: Akihabara, the chase, a

familiar face …

Trevor jerked in panic, sucking in as much air as his constricted chest would allow. He

felt like something was sitting on him, but the ache in his neck told him his head had been

hanging to one side, so he had to be upright. Upright, blind, unable to move. He strained his

arms and legs. Nothing. The panic bubbled higher, sour in the back of his throat. He was

trapped.

Then the door opened.

The searing light blinded him all over again, but he let his eyes slide out of focus until

his pupils adjusted. A rule: Don’t let them see you squint. Don’t let them see you sweat.

“You’re awake,” someone said. “Good.”

The voice was cool and oily, its vowels as delicately clipped as bonsai branches. Trevor

felt his poker face go rigid. The back of his neck went cold. He knew that voice.

“What day is it?” the voice asked.

Trevor stared straight ahead, trying to think. He breathed in through his nose, felt his

chest tighten. The neon blur in the center of his vision was beginning to dissipate, and he

could hear a faint creaking as he tried to move. He was tied down, and very thoroughly. Or

more accurately, tied up, pinned to something in an upright position with his arms and legs

spread. The surface against his back was flat, and the voice was somehow lower relative to

his ears than it should have been. Had he been pinned to a wall? Why?

Fingers appeared from nowhere and clamped around his jaw. Something pinched his

left ear with a click, then stabbed it with a bang. The pain flared too suddenly for Trevor to

swallow the yelp, but the hand clamped his mouth shut and shoved the back of his head

into the wall, hard, before the sound could escape. He blinked, stunned and throbbing.

“Come on,” the voice said. “I know how hard your head is. What day is it?”

His ear was screaming now with every thump of his heart. Let them think they’ve won.

“Thursday,” Trevor said hoarsely, guessing.

“See?” the voice said. “He’s fine. No brain damage.”

“Did you really have to do that?” A second voice, like a gravel road.

“No,” the oily voice said with obvious amusement. “Only if you want him compliant.”

The haze cleared more, and Trevor found himself staring past the hand and down an

arm. It was covered with the sleeve of a black silk dress shirt. Expensive clothing for an

interrogation. Someone had money to burn, or didn’t think Trevor would be able to mess

up his wardrobe. Cocky.

At the end of the arm was the foxhound face, long and narrow and hungry with soulful

brown eyes that lied elegantly to everyone who looked into them. Foxhound was clean-

shaven from the small cleft in his chin to the smooth curve of his skull, and it was all Trevor

could do not to think about the things he’d seen the man wash off that unlined skin.

Foxhound’s free hand held something heavy and gleaming. Trevor took a moment to

recognize an office stapler.

Foxhound glanced back at his companion, still blurred, then back at Trevor.

“Boo,” he said. Two of his fingers were under Trevor’s chin, against the boy’s carotid

arteries. Monitoring his pulse, or just preparing to choke him out?

The panic was getting in the way of escape. Trevor swallowed it, ordered his brain to

shout over the background noise. Forget what you know about him, he told himself. He’s just

some guy. (Some guy who pinned you to a wall and stapled your ear.) How do you handle

some guy interrogating you? (Besides not saying anything, which you’ve already blown.)

Silence was no longer an option. Say something useful, then.

“You’ll never get him,” Trevor said, as calmly as he could. “I don’t know where he is,

and you’ve lost your chance to follow me.”

Foxhound snorted derisively. “We gave up on following you weeks ago, kiddo. If you

were going to find your boss with that vaunted brain of yours, you’d have done it by now.”

He hefted the stapler and smiled. “Now, your ear cartilage should seal up nicely if infection

doesn’t set in. But there are other parts of you that won’t.”

Trevor couldn’t feel his lips as he said, “What do you want?”

Foxhound’s smile widened. “You.”

The chill dropped from the back of Trevor’s neck to the base of his spine.

“This,” Foxhound said, hefting the stapler, “is just to demonstrate what’ll happen to you

if you do something stupid. Look down.”

Foxhound’s fingers tilted Trevor’s face down. He could see Foxhound’s familiar,

spotless shoes. Cheap pile carpet …

And all down the front of his own body, a sea of silver.

Foxhound had duct-taped him to the wall.

The fingers forced his head back up to look Foxhound in the eye. “I can tell you’re

already having trouble breathing. It doesn’t have to get any worse than this. If you stay

quiet for the next few hours, then you’ll get where you’re going in one piece.”

“And where’s that?” Trevor asked around Foxhound’s fingers.

“I think you know.”

Trevor tried to shake his head, but the grip was too strong, so he twitched it instead. “If

you think I’m going to help you, you’re crazy.”

Foxhound’s smile turned frosty. “You have more information about his whereabouts

than anyone on earth, and a detective mind he trained personally. And it’s not like you’re

doing anything useful with your prefrontal cortex. A few minor modifications, and you’ll be

better than new.” His fingers tightened suddenly. “But what happens to the rest of you is

entirely up to me.”

Trevor stared into the predator’s deep brown eyes and, with a small thrill of

accomplishment, managed not to panic all over again.

But he did start to worry.

*

I was wondering why the World Justice Federation would be holding an

interview at night. Now I know. Let’s just say someone on the team is even yummier than Captain

Charming … and the feeling is mutual. I think I can say I passed the entrance exam. :)

4

It was called Peregrine’s Perch, and it was so cute Rae wanted to vomit on her hideout

keyboard.

Suppressing her gag reflex by sheer force of will, she scrolled through previous entries.

The blogger had opinions on everything Rae wouldn’t be caught dead discussing. Fashion.

Clubbing. Villains’ butts. It would sound like Kat Regan in a mask, except Kat wasn’t smart

enough not to take credit for this travesty. And pet names for Captain Catastrophe? Who in

their right mind would believe this blog belonged to the real Peregrine?

Of course, she had called Captain Catastrophe “Captain Collateral Damage” for a couple

of weeks after his zombie flying wombats started smacking into high-rise windows.

Somebody might have overheard that. And that YouTube clip of her making Scooby-Doo

cracks as the LAPD put the Grim Ghoul into a squad car had gone viral a few months back—

mostly because the Ghoul couldn’t see out of his own mask, and so he’d kept comically

hitting his head on the roof of the car, but she’d been audible just the same. Civilians

probably thought she was a sarcastic dingbat. They never paid attention to all the time she

spent creeping around in silence, because they could just assume she wasn’t around at all.

Ironic, since she was practically the only mask who ever was around.

Rae sat back from her keyboard and breathed in the cool damp of the hideout. The

Black Mask had had the foresight to build his secret complex into L.A.’s storm-drain system

long before she was born, but it hadn’t saved him from whatever had killed most of L.A.’s

masks a decade back. In less than a week, almost fifty costumed heroes had been killed, and

the population had never rebounded. Other cities had heroes—masks, capes, metas,

whatever they were called—crawling all over their landscapes; L.A. had a banged-up

memorial plinth in Exposition Park that got fresh graffiti on it at least once a week. And it

had Peregrine.

Rae lived in a dead hero’s hideout, rode a dead guy’s motorcycle to crime scenes, and

filled her kit with dead men’s tools and weapons. No wonder people forgot she existed

when she wasn’t running her mouth. By L.A. standards, she was funereally unhip.

But she couldn’t let people think she was Kat. Or infatuated with a petty villain. And the

idea of someone revealing her identity in a live webcast—if by some chance they actually

knew it—made her skin crawl.

Rae stretched her fingers, cracked her knuckles, and got back to typing. A domain

registry here, a directory search there. She couldn’t believe how many dead masks’

electronic backdoors still worked. Living in a city of ghosts had its advantages.

Rae frowned as the data came up. There was something odd about the street address

registered to the blog’s domain name. Something familiar … She opened a Google Maps

window, posted the address into the search box, and tapped a key.

The satellite image made her mouth fall open. The address was dead in the middle of

the Walker University campus. She barely knew anyone in her own high school—why

would someone living in a college dorm want to smear her?

More importantly, why would she recognize the address?

There were search results under the map listing. Rae clicked on a link from the campus

newspaper.

The story was two years old, dating from about the time she’d taken up the Peregrine

mantle—another ghost, of course; she’d had her pick—and before she’d figured out how to

organize a casebook. The link led to a short article, which led to photographs of a charred

dorm room, which led to a summary of an expulsion hearing, which led to a police report …

which led to a mugshot.

Rae permitted herself a small, wry smile.

She should have known. *

Whew! Catty much? Early morning training session with Superhottie … and

oh, yeah, the rest of the world-savers, too. Turns out one of my teammates isn’t happy that teacher has

a new pet. Couldn’t possibly be jealous. After all, it only took one itty-bitty ninja star to show her who’s

boss.

Ten hours to the big reveal, birdwatchers.

5

Trevor sagged against the tape and tried to remember everything he’d ever learned

about escapes.

Getting out of straitjackets was easy—inflate his chest as it was being strapped on so

he had wiggle room later; maybe dislocate a shoulder if necessary. But Foxhound had taped

him up while he was unconscious, breathing shallowly, so wiggle room was limited. And

dislocating a shoulder wouldn’t help when his arms were spread and pinned down.

There was probably a reason Houdini had used straitjackets instead of duct tape.

The room was dimly lit now, enough for Trevor to see why he’d been taped to a wall

instead of a chair or something else normal. Foxhound’s hideout was a typically cramped

Tokyo flat. Even without major furnishings, the space was confined enough that Trevor

could do damage if he got loose. And there was a computer set up on a table across the

room, its monitor glow the source of the room’s illumination. It was maybe two yards

away—too close if he’d been left in a chair anywhere on the room’s floor. Its proximity

made him itch. So close. So far. So frustrating.

Foxhound or Gravel Road came in and checked the screen occasionally, pointedly

ignoring Trevor. An ex-sidekick taped to a wall was apparently less interesting than some

trashy superhero blog based in L.A. Trevor could read the screen most of the time. It

sounded fake to him, but then he’d never been to Los Angeles. Maybe superheroes there

had blogs.

It was odd, though; he couldn’t name a single superhero active in L.A. The town was a

dead zone for capes, or masks, or whatever they were called there. Did Foxhound not know

that? If he didn’t, Trevor wasn’t going to tell him.

Trevor hoped the blog was fake. He didn’t know what Foxhound could want with other

superheroes, but it couldn’t be good.

The worst part of hanging there hour after hour was the thinking, Trevor decided. He

couldn’t breathe enough to move or talk, so he had nothing to do but think. It might be his

last chance to do this kind of thinking, too, if Foxhound was going to cut away the parts of

his brain that made him say no to people like Foxhound. The prefrontal cortex governed

things like impulse control and ethical decision making.

Trevor tried to shudder as he imagined what he’d be like without it. He didn’t know

what it was like to be a sociopath, but before he found out, he was going to get in as much

thinking as he could with the brain centers he was going to lose.

Unfortunately, all he could think about was how badly he’d screwed up.

Trevor filled his lungs and strained against the tape. It creaked once, and then he gave

up, gasping. This had been easier when he was smaller. Ten years old, tumbling over

rooftops, slinging rocks at bad guys too dumb to know a little kid could be dangerous. Now

he was still too small to take someone like Foxhound, but too big to go unnoticed. Too big

to wiggle out of the tape.

And Jude was gone.

Trevor hissed and flexed his shoulders. He closed his eyes, but the image came up

anyway: a destroyed apartment, a sinister pool of blood on the floor. He’d searched all over

the world for the man who had raised him, and he’d failed. Foxhound and the men who

backed him were going to carve away the hero Jude had trained until only the weapon was

left.

And they already knew how good a weapon Trevor was.

He wanted even more to stop those memories, but they rushed in on him too—the

acrid stench of burning flesh and steel, the wailing of the wounded and the bereaved. Jude

might have had contacts across the globe, but none of them would help Trevor after that.

He was alone, and trapped, and defeated. He’d failed.

Maybe he wouldn’t miss thinking after all.

The computer monitor flickered as the screen refreshed. Trevor squinted, trying to

read it. He inflated his chest, tried to stretch the tape, gave up and went back to reading.

There was nothing else to do.

*

Are you ready?

6

The following afternoon, Rae stood in the shadow of a flowering jacaranda tree on a

quiet street in the San Fernando Valley and prepared for battle.

It had taken three tries to get her full kit into the small shoulder bag resting against her

hip—at least, to get it in there and keep everything from clinking. She would have preferred

the trusty black backpack she carried as Peregrine, but that would be too obvious. This bag

was hot pink and carried the logo of some boutique whose name Rae couldn’t pronounce. It

went with the tattoo shirt she’d stolen from Kat Regan’s gym locker that morning, before

she’d made herself throw up on the floor of biology class, gotten excused, and snuck out the

girls’ bathroom window. The fabric stretched tighter over her chest and abdomen than it

would over Kat’s, so she’d covered most of it up with one of Kat’s sweatshirts. It, too, was

pink. At least it sort of went with Rae’s old jeans. But she still felt like she’d been attacked

by a cotton-candy tornado.

I haven’t worn this much pink since I was six. When this is over, I’m going to shower for a

week.

Nervously, Rae touched her hair again. She’d had to comb the tangles for twenty

minutes to get it to lie flat and flip perkily outward at the bottom. She felt odd wearing only

light eye makeup—unlike her usual self.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? To not be me.

Rae closed her eyes and started to think Kat thoughts. Don’t start with the

snappishness—there was no way in there. Rae didn’t care about clothes. Kat did. That

meant she paid attention to how things looked. She paid attention to who was in style and

who wasn’t; she knew the rules and wanted people to play by them. She led her pack of

clones around the school like an alpha bitch, and no one else was allowed to mess with a

girl who ran in Kat’s shadow. She protected her own. Careful, observant, loyal. Rae could be

those things.

Rae opened her eyes and was somebody else.

She stepped lightly as she crossed the manicured lawn, letting a few extra years seep

into the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her head. An almost-sixteen-year-old couldn’t do

this. Nineteen would be better, or twenty. The new person was still smiling, though, still

sweet. She still had to get in the door.

Not-Rae picked her way around a flowerbed, lightly touching a yellow wooden garden

sign that implored the plants to Grow Darn It. She flitted up three steps to a porch, carefully

avoiding a dark ground-level window behind the petunias, and pressed one finger to the

doorbell. It dinged, then donged. Not-Rae smiled, charmed.

The door opened.

“Hi,” said not-Rae. “I’m—” the name came out before she could think about it—“Kitty.

Are you Brian’s mom?”

The woman was tall and slender, with grey touches in her honey-colored hair. She

smiled instinctively in response to Rae/Kitty’s beam, but lines tightened around her eyes as

she took in the strange girl in pink standing on her doorstep.

“I’m Andrea Finch, yes,” she said evenly. “Do you know my son?”

Rae let her head tilt to the side. “Sort of,” she said. Her voice dropped to a

conspiratorial whisper. “I don’t think he knows I’m coming.”

One of Mrs. Finch’s eyebrows arched. “Oh, really?”

Rae smiled sheepishly. “My friend Regan works in the registrar’s office at school. She

got me his address. I was really worried about him after … well, you know.”

“It was an accident,” Mrs. Finch said firmly.

“I know.” Rae felt her green eyes opening wide and guileless. Whoever Kitty was, she

believed what she was saying. “I was talking to the professor, and he thinks we can get

Brian reinstated. It’s not like anybody got hurt, and it doesn’t make any sense for him to set

off a bomb in his own dorm room anyway.”

Unless he was an idiot, the Rae part of her brain added traitorously.

The Kitty part shushed it and kept talking. “Do you think he’d be interested in coming

back?” she asked. “If we can get him reinstated, I mean.”

Mrs. Finch regarded her for a moment.

Then she said, “How did you say you knew Brian?”

And there it was, right in the front of her brain, an answer that Rae could never have

thought of but the newly born Kitty somehow did. Something Rae couldn’t say but Kitty

would, gladly.

“He helped me with my chemistry homework,” Kitty/Rae said brightly. “And, um, you

know.” She blushed.

A wan smile appeared on Mrs. Finch’s face, and the door opened wider.

“He’s downstairs,” she said. “Would you like a cup of tea before you go down to see

him?”

Kitty smiled so wide Rae thought her face was going to split.

Together she followed Mrs. Finch into the house, past carefully framed family photos

and worn but well-kept furniture. The tea was sweet, the conversation light. After ten

minutes Rae spotted the door to the basement, and Kitty excused herself to use the

bathroom.

Rae closed the bathroom door behind her and started to strip furiously. She’d have to

do this fast if she wanted to sneak downstairs to meet her doppelganger.

7

Trevor had nowhere else to look when the webcam window popped open.

The room beyond the window was long, low, and dark, and ended in a short flight of

stairs leading up. A basement, perhaps. Light glowed from a high window. Ground level?

California sun?

A hand in a purple glove gently adjusted the camera, then vanished out of the frame.

Someone snickered.

In mid-snicker, the door at the top of the stairs suddenly opened.

The fuzzy outline of a human being appeared, backlit. Off-camera, the voice stopped

snickering and cursed.

“Hi,” the figure said, taking a step down. It was a female voice, young and relatively

high, with just a touch of husk to it. “You know,” it continued, “if you got a white lab smock

and some goggles …” it paused, considering; “… you still wouldn’t look a thing like Neil

Patrick Harris.”

“What are you doing here?” the voice that belonged to the purple glove demanded.

The girl took another step, her hips swaying. “Oh, you know,” she said. “You Google

yourself, you never know where you’ll end up. Or who you’ll be when you get there.” Two

more steps. Trevor could just make her out now—a black hooded tunic, trimmed in red,

over jeans and battered sneakers. Her costume was homemade. In other cities there were

professionals to do that. The red sash at her waist was pinned with something metallic that

glinted as she moved.

“I can’t believe you still live with your mom, Brian,” she said. She sounded amused.

“Most villains would have gotten a real hideout after blowing up a dormitory.”

“That’s Captain Catastrophe to you,” Purple Glove shot back. “And you’d better not

come any closer.”

“Aw.” The girl’s voice pouted. “Are you going to be a tease?”

“I mean it!”

The girl paused, her foot hovering above the carpet. Her voice turned cold. “You should

have known better than to use my name, Brian. If I wanted people choosing my identity for

me, I’d go back to high school.”

Another curse. “We can’t do this. My mom’s upstairs!”

“Don’t worry.” The girl stepped noiselessly onto the floor. “I’m practically family.”

Then she moved. Not as fast as Trevor could, but the cam image blurred and the girl

was gone, and there was only the sound of crashing furniture, a yelp from Purple Glove, and

the thump of a conscious body hitting the floor against its will. Then silence, broken only by

a low groan.

The girl sighed as she stepped back into frame. It wasn’t a satisfied kind of noise, or an

exasperated one, Trevor thought. It was just … sad. Tired. Her hood covered her hair, and a

black bandana covered the lower part of her face, but he got a glimpse of bright green eyes

as she bent over the webcam, peering into its lens as she reached behind it with one arm.

“You want to know who I really am?” the green-eyed girl asked with sudden ferocity.

She straightened up, yanked something, and then the image blinked out.

Trevor found himself alone in the dark, with an idea growing in his brain.

He knew Foxhound. An ex-sidekick duct-taped to a wall wouldn’t keep him busy long,

and he wouldn’t be monitoring this blog without a reason. He had plans for this girl—

maybe like he had for Trevor, maybe somehow worse. She was a kid, like him, and already

in the sights of a sociopath half a world away. And unlike Trevor, she didn’t know it.

It was one thing for Trevor to let himself hang here and wait for them to cut into his

brain. But to do nothing while Foxhound closed in on this girl—no training, no backup,

tackling bad guys out of sheer cussedness that would have made Trevor like her as recently

as a year ago …

Trevor blinked. He hadn’t realized how much fight had gone out of him until just now.

A year ago, less, and he would have answered that blaze in her eyes with a fire of his own.

He’d lost that. And there had been a flash of something familiar in that symbol at her hip,

too, just as she’d killed the feed. The girl had something he needed, and didn’t know it.

And suddenly, Trevor had an idea after all.

He began to cough, gently at first, then louder. The sound of a cat with a hairball gave

way to a racking tubercular wheeze. His lungs burned with the pressure of the tape and the

stabbing effort of the cough, but he kept it up.

The door opened. It wasn’t Foxhound.

Gravel Road hurried to Trevor, concerned but cautious. Trevor hawked up phlegm and

let it dribble from his mouth. He bucked with a particularly violent cough, convulsing

enough to fling a glob of spit into the man’s face. Splat. Bullseye.

Gravel Road flinched as the spittle dripped from one eyebrow, then wiped it away in

disgust. And then he did what Trevor had been waiting for: he drew back his still-slimy

hand and backhanded Trevor across the face. Or tried to.

Trevor was waiting. He opened his mouth wide to cough as the hand flew toward

him—

—and just before it connected, he lifted his head enough to catch the hand in his teeth

and bite down hard.

The man bellowed in pain, jerked his hand free, and cuffed Trevor with his other hand.

Trevor’s head banged into the wall. His vision was full of fireworks and his mouth revolted

at the copper-penny taste of blood where he cut his cheek on a tooth, but it was all he could

do not to laugh in triumph.

He had felt that jerk through his whole body, and he had felt the subtle pop of a section

of tape coming loose.

Trevor sucked in his first full breath in days, twisted in place just to hear the tape rip,

and let his mind fly ahead in time to everything he would do, a few seconds from now,

when he was free.

One way or another, that girl was in for a surprise …

Character Spotlight: Rae Masterson

Ten years ago, an unknown enemy attacked the community of superheroes, or “masks,” in

Los Angeles and left them maimed, in hiding, or dead. Now 16-year-old Rae Masterson, as

Peregrine, is her city’s first, last, and only line of defense against mad scientists, evil

wizards, and dorks with made-in-China death rays. Her quick wit and her instinct for

people make her an accomplished con artist, and her arsenal of dead heroes’ tools and

weapons helps keep her alive. She regularly talks her way into and out of trouble, but

always solo—she knows that the good guys can’t afford to have friends or loved ones

they can endanger.

Rae is a sophomore at an exclusive private high school, where she uses a combination of

stratospheric test scores and dark eye makeup to convince her teachers she’s brilliant

but troubled … and to sneak out of class to fight the bad guys. With her lack of powers,

her homemade costume, and her snarky sense of humor, she probably wouldn’t be

accepted as a hero anywhere else, but here there’s no one to stop her … until she catches

a glimpse of a well-known hero’s carefully guarded secret. Now her only chance to get out

of this alive is to do the thing she swore she’d never contemplate—trust.

Character Spotlight: Trevor Gray

Whatever killed the masks of Los Angeles didn’t affect the heroes in other cities. Trevor Grey

grew up in Chicago, an orphan raised and trained by that city’s foremost non-powered hero, and he

knew from an early age that he wanted to follow in his mentor’s footsteps. He never got the chance.

His mentor vanished, leaving behind a destroyed apartment, a pool of blood, and a lost kid sidekick

who soon discovered the world is a hard place to be a hero. Trevor’s quest to find his foster father

took him all over the globe … and ultimately ended in something so terrible that Trevor is now on the

run from both the heroes he once idolized and the dark forces that stole the only family he can

remember.

Trevor is a top-notch detective and a gifted fighter who planned to spend his life tumbling over

rooftops after bad guys, but these days he spends most of his time trying not to get caught. When

Rae crosses his path, he is torn between his heroic instincts—save the girl, expose the villain—and

his fear that the next time he tries to save the day, it could get him killed, or worse. Can he trust

his real name to a girl he barely knows? Or will his last chance to be a hero only prove he’s been a

villain all along?

Character Spotlight: Cobalt

One of the world's best-known superheroes, Cobalt is a

founder of the World Justice Federation. He often clashes

with the team’s other founder, John Lawrence, over the

leadership of the team, and while both men claim they’re

friends, the rumors about Cobalt’s shadowy past make that

hard to believe. Permanently hidden behind body armor and a

breath screen, his powers a secret, his motives obscure,

Cobalt is nevertheless one of the good guys … until Rae

Masterson catches him trying to shoot a captured suspect in

the head.

Now Cobalt wants Rae and Trevor silenced before they can

tell what they've seen. The world will take his word over that

of a powerless girl in a mask or a boy with his face all over

Interpol warrants. He thinks he’s won. But this winner has

never seen what the losers can do …

Character Spotlight: John Lawrence

Field commander of the World Justice Federation, the world's premier superhero team, Lawrence uses

his energy powers for the good of the world. He’s a natural leader and all-around Boy Scout with a

goofy sense of humor, and he believes that the good guys should be truly good. He doesn't always

agree with Cobalt's grim-and-gritty approach, but against all odds, the two of them just might be best

friends.

Lawrence doesn't believe Cobalt could possibly have done what Trevor and Rae say he did. He's

developing an unhealthy interest in Trevor, and seems to know something about Trevor's mysterious

past. And he's hiding a few secrets of his own ...

Character Spotlight: Captain Catastrophe

Captain Catastrophe is the worst supervillain ever. He's not that bad a guy—he just can't

catch a break. His death rays blow up in his face, Rae captures him about every other

week, and he can't even keep his cape clean. So why does Cobalt want him dead?

Captain Catastrophe designed his costume with the goal of becoming a superhero, but one

bad night later he was robbing banks. Deep down, he still thinks he’s out to save the world

… and before the story is over, he will surprise everyone...

Character Spotlight: The Spooky Side

After the masks were killed, Los Angeles became a city of ghosts, none of them

more prominent—or menacing—than the MASKED RIDER. A spectral

horseman rumored to be the trapped spirit of a long-dead vigilante, the Rider

appears whenever masks are about to die. Rumor has it he collects the souls of

heroes, and now he’s taken a special interest in Rae and Trevor. He predicts that

Trevor will soon break his vow never to kill … and wants Rae out of the line of fire

when that happens. Is the Rider trying to save someone? And if so—who?

The ghostly COYOTE is new on the scene—stalking through shadows, appearing

when Rae is in danger, and facing off tooth-and-hoof against the Masked Rider. The

childhood tragedy that motivated Rae to take up her mask left her with a phobia of

ordinary coyotes, and having a stalker who can walk through walls is not helping her

face her fears. But when a life hangs in the balance, Rae will have to choose between

the devil she knows and the one she doesn’t. Her choice, and what happens next, will

change the world forever …

The Secret Origin

Hi! I’m glad to see you’ve made it through this Free Comic

Book Day special story. If nobody’s said it yet, welcome to

Masks!

You might have noticed this isn’t your typical comic book. In

fact, Masks is not a comic book at all—it’s a novel that just

happens to be about superheroes. Masks began as a series of

superhero adventures I wrote to amuse myself in high school.

When an older kid stole my notebook, I thought I was going

to shrivel up and die … until she came up to me in the hall

three days later, handed the notebook back, and told me to

finish what I was writing. She’s now my best friend, and

Masks is now a highly anticipated young-adult novel. It’s all

about being sixteen and weird. About growing up, and keeping

secrets, and facing your fears, and friendship, and true love.

And if that sounds boring, I guess I should tell you that it’s

also got several huge supervillain fights, a respectable number

of explosions, and enough witty banter to give Spider-Man a seizure.

In Masks, the two characters you’ve just gotten to know—Trevor and Rae—meet for the first time,

just before they discover the famous hero Cobalt’s dirty secret. The only way he can keep that

secret now is to kill both of them—and they’ll have to trust each other, and do some fast detective

work, if they want to live to see their next birthdays. But while they’re digging into Cobalt’s

secrets, they also end up digging into their own. As Cobalt closes in, Rae and Trevor must face the

truth about their city, themselves, and what it really takes to be a hero. What are you willing to

give up to save the world?

I’ve made some of the best friends imaginable through Masks … and Rae and Trevor are two of

them. I’m delighted to be sharing them with you, and I hope you’ll follow their adventures in this

funny little story that’s something of a romance, something of an action movie, and nothing you’d

ever expect. See you on the rooftops!

R.M. Hendershot

Author of MASKS

P.S. If you want to find out more about Trevor and Rae, or just say hi, check out my blog at

http://TheMasksBlog.blogspot.com. It’s where I post stories, videos, inside info, and anything that

crosses my poor befuddled brain. Including mutant plush toys. I kid you not.